Common Cartridge's New Standard Gets Support From Blackboard

Instructors can now easily share resources and education related materials, thanks to the full support of Blackboard (News - Alert) Inc. towards Common Cartridge 1.1. The new version of the Blackboard Learn 9.1 is the first ever platform to support the already set industry standard from Common Cartridge.

Blackboard’s support to common cartridge extends to complete import and export assistance for its Basic Learning Tools Interoperability. In January this year, Blackboard had announced support for the Basic LTI and Common Cartridge 1.0 version. Thanks to the official certification from IMS Global Learning Consortium received in April, Blackboard now offers complete support for the latest versions as well.

Blackboard has been striving to provide educators a better and more open platform for learning as well as give its users and customers better flexibility in using their products and tools. The launch of the new support system for Common Cartridge adds to this goal, reaching another highlight in the overall strategy. Being the only provider of education based technology, Blackboard is planning to continue its support for every standard in the future. The learning management applications on offer from the company provide its clients a comprehensive database and highly detailed data on the system activity, helping them improve their overall technology investment and performance.

In a release, Ray Henderson, president of Blackboard Learn said that, “We're excited to be the first to deliver on this new standard and to provide another example of our commitment to standards and execution in support of our clients and users. We thank IMS Global for their leadership and partnership and renew our call for other organizations and providers to join us in supporting and adopting these standards to ensure greater benefit to users of education technology.”

Learning tools across various platforms can now be utilized simultaneously by instructional designers and educators, thereby promoting better sharing of knowledge and global sharing of teaching resources. Also, the clients have access to additional choices in integrating other external tools into Blackboard, and the content developed by publishers can be transmitted more easily between the teaching and learning communities.

Dr. Rob Abel, chief executive of IMS Global, said that, “It's very clear that Blackboard is committed to supporting open standards at the core of their products based on their leadership in implementing Common Cartridge 1.1. We are definitely seeing the beginning of a new phase in the marketplace where open standards are now becoming the de facto and default option for educational content and the educational enterprise for the benefit of educators, students, and administrators – and Blackboard is playing a major role in helping to make this happen.”

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