Blackboard Announces Details for BbWorld Europe ‘09

A Dedicated Event Focusing on Teaching and Learning Technology

AMSTERDAM – April 6, 2009 – Blackboard Inc. (NASDAQ:BBBB), a global leader in education technology, today announced details for its 6th annual European users conference, BbWorld Europe® ’09, which will take place April 6-8 at the Fira Palace Hotel in Barcelona, Spain.

BbWorld Europe is a unique networking opportunity for hundreds of senior education leaders, e-learning managers, systems integrators, course designers, and academics representing over 100 organisations and 27 countries spanning Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Attendees will network and share best practices, develop further knowledge and skills in the field of online teaching and learning that will help them work more effectively, and discuss innovations that are being used to promote student engagement and achievement.

At BbWorld Europe, participants can take part in more than 30 user-led sessions highlighting innovative and entrepreneurial approaches that leverage technology to address some of the most important challenges in education, from measuring student learning outcomes and assessing the effect of academic programs to engaging students using Web 2.0 technologies and improving retention for at-risk students and learners. 

At the event, Blackboard will also highlight its efforts to engage students and learners in a more personalized learning experience, including a demonstration of the recently announced release of a free application that lets users of the Apple® iPhone™ and iPod touch® take learning on the go by accessing Blackboard Learn™ course information wherever and whenever they prefer. In addition, keynote addresses at the event will be delivered by the following:

• Michael L. Chasen, President and CEO of Blackboard, on the challenges higher education institutions are facing in a rapidly changing world;
• Dirk Van Damme, Head of CERI – OECD/EDU, on the future of higher education and the need for institutions to make strategic choices for radical innovation to uphold their leadership in supporting future human development; and 
• Gordon Freedman, Vice President of Education Strategy at Blackboard, on the re-engineering and re-invention of universities and how in the current economic climate, instead of simply looking at how to contain costs, institutions are also looking at how education needs to evolve.

“Educators are constantly finding new and innovative ways to deliver excellence in teaching and learning with the help of Blackboard’s VLE’s,” said Chasen. “BbWorld Europe is a unique opportunity for education professionals to connect with colleagues and share best practices while also gaining insight from the Blackboard experts on how to improve their teaching and learning systems.”

Once again, the event will include Blackboard Developers Day which will bring developers together with their laptops to learn how to extend their virtual learning environment with the new Blackboard Learn, Release 9 platform. Release 9 introduces many new flexible options to integrate and extend Blackboard’s learning environment, and developers can learn firsthand how to customize their virtual learning environments. Each session will include a conceptual overview followed by technical details and will cover topics ranging from how to customize your VLE and how to develop a custom learning  or interoperable proxy tool to customizing the User Interface with CSS, themes and branding and an exploration of open source projects & community.

For more information on BbWorld Europe, including the registration and the event guide, please visit 
http://www.bbworld.com/2009/Europe/.