ANAHEIM, CA – November 5, 2003 – Today at EDUCAUSE 2003, Blackboard Inc., a leading enterprise software company for e-Education, unveiled its education-specific learning content management and e-Portfolio system – the Blackboard Content System™ to more than 6,000 global higher education attendees. The Blackboard Content System represents the very latest in e-Education innovation and is the fourth major enterprise software system from Blackboard Inc.

Slated for general release in the first quarter of 2004, the Blackboard Content System will benefit students, faculty and campus IT administrators by lowering the costs and increasing the simplicity of managing learning content, digital assets and e-Portfolios in an enterprise learning environment. 

H. David Lambert, Vice President and Chief Information Officer at Georgetown University commented, “The promise of better integration between our library resources and academic course work has been one of the most exciting aspects of implementing the new Blackboard Content System.  With features like e-Reserves made so accessible, our instructors and librarians are working together more effectively than ever before, sharing materials, collaborating, and complementing each other’s work without giving up control of their respective content.”

The Blackboard Content System incorporates application capabilities in four key areas:

• Learning Content Management, to easily, economically and effectively share and reuse single files or large volumes of content assets across sections, courses, organizations and institutions.
• e-Portfolios allow students and faculty members to assemble, present and share information online for documenting academic growth, career evaluation and course preparation.
• Virtual Hard Drives economically accommodate the broad content storage needs of individual users in the digital education environment. Unlike other products or even homegrown solutions that provide users with centralized storage resources, the Blackboard Content System is the only one that offers a truly user friendly interface—the same interface students and instructors are already using every day with their other Blackboard products.
• Library Digital Asset Management creates an interactive environment for faculty to search, access, and incorporate digital library resources such as e-Reserves in course preparation.

In development for the past year, the Blackboard Content System builds on Blackboard’s reputation for innovation and excellence in product development.  The product was developed by a dedicated team of Blackboard engineers and rigorously field-tested at leading academic institutions including, Dallas County Community College District, Georgetown University, and the University of Cincinnati.  Already, several academic institutions including Spectrum Pacific Learning and University of California College Prep have decided to license the new Blackboard Content System in advance of its pending launch in the first quarter of 2004. 

“Continued R&D investment and constant product innovation are tenets of Blackboard’s philosophy of meeting and exceeding client demands,” said Michael Chasen, CEO at Blackboard.  “We are excited by the response we have seen from the many academic institutions here at EDUCAUSE and look forward to working with them to address their content management needs.”

For additional information on the Blackboard Content System, please visit Blackboard’s Web site at http://contentsystem.blackboard.com. To schedule a product demonstration or to speak with a Blackboard representative, call 1.800.424.9299 ext. 4 or +1.202.463.4860 ext. 273.

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