Education software and consulting company, Blackboard, today introduced an open enrollment option for their CourseSites™ products. This allows instructors to open registration so any number of students can sign up for courses they are teaching with the free, fully-hosted and supported online system. In addition, the company has added mobile support, giving CourseSites users access on a range of popular smartphones and mobile devices.
With the open enrollment option, any number and any type of student can register for an instructor's course, allowing the platform to be used for open teaching initiatives, community outreach or collaborative research.
"During the past decade, the world has become wide open for learning," said Dr. Curtis Bonk, a Professor of Education at Indiana University who is using the product to launch an open course this month on learner-centered approaches to blended and online instruction. "With CourseSites and other initiatives, Blackboard is making great strides in fostering this idea of opening up education opportunities beyond traditional boundaries."
Dr. Bonk's course is part of a new free open course series from Blackboard focused on teaching and learning with technology. The courses will be delivered through CourseSites and led by thought leaders in instructional technology and pedagogy and by Blackboard experts who will share successful strategies and approaches to online learning, course design and facilitation.
The course series and open enrollment capabilities are part of Blackboard's continued effort to support growing interest in open education programs, including delivering large open courses (sometimes called "MOOCs," or massive open online courses) and make it easier for users to create, use and find open courses and content. Last year CourseSites was enabled to support the publishing and sharing of courses as open education resources (OER), and policies for Blackboard Learn™, the company's flagship LMS platform, were adjusted to provide greater support for open initiatives.
