The Oregon Department of Community Colleges and Workforce Development (CCWD) has selected Blackboard Inc. for Web conferencing across the state's 17 community colleges. The decision to bring Blackboard Collaborate(TM), the only online collaboration platform built specifically for education, to all Oregon's community colleges was driven by the need to reach more students and gain cost efficiencies. The platform will provide learners with a highly engaging virtual classroom with many options for users to interact with peers and instructors. Users will be able to participate in and listen to lectures from their mobile devices. Oregon officials were motivated by the desire to make courses available to remote, non-traditional and students in rural areas of the state who might not be able to come to campus. Another key factor in the selection was the platform's unique ability to fully integrate with all leading learning management systems (LMS), as Oregon's community colleges do not all use the same LMS. CCWD officials also looked at the success Blue Mountain Community College has had since 2006 in leveraging the platform to enhance classroom instruction, tutoring and advising; in 2012 alone, lecture recordings were viewed over 23,000 times.

Haileybury has selected Blackboard to facilitate important communication and preparedness. Haileybury is the first ELC-Year 12 school in Australia to implement the Blackboard Connect(TM) mass notification system, which is used by thousands of education and government organizations globally, to enable school leaders to stay connected with parents and staff with targeted multimodal notifications. Haileybury, with campuses at Keysborough, Brighton and Berwick, implemented the new system after the response to an incident last year led to a review of school security policy. School officials chose Blackboard Connect for its ability to quickly record and send an unlimited number of personalised voice messages to home phones, businesses and mobile phones. Blackboard Connect also provides a two-way SMS platform, where school staff can send texts and emails to recipients and receive replies via text. Messages can be recorded in advance, so Haileybury officials can send information and updates in just a few clicks.

Ottawa University has partnered with Blackboard Inc. to support a major expansion of its blended and online degree programs. Under the multi-year deal, Kansas-based Ottawa, which currently operates six different campus locations nationwide, will grow and scale existing and future residential, hybrid and online undergraduate and graduate degree programs. The effort marks one of the institutional online education initiatives to date as schools traditionally focus on only a handful of online programs at a time. Ottawa's plan to grow all programs across its catalog is a central part of the institution's strategy to significantly expand its student population by 2020, while remaining focused on delivering high quality academic programs. Officials selected Blackboard as a strategic partner in the initiative for its expertise in online program management and design and for its broad portfolio of proven education services and technologies supporting all aspects of the student lifecycle, including marketing, recruiting, enrollment, and learning analytics. Blackboard will also provide training and guidance to Ottawa faculty to support effective approaches to teaching online. In addition to reaching more learners, the initiative will help current and prospective students complete degree requirements more quickly, conveniently and affordably by allowing them to choose the delivery modality that is right for them.