Blackboard Hitches to Google’s Wagon (Campus Technology.com)

From Campus Technology.com

Blackboard Inc. said last week it would integrate Google Inc.’s search technology into its campus management systems. Blackboard joined Google’s Enterprise Professional Program. The move will provide “a tremendous value to people across a campus community, allowing them to develop greater search literacy to find information within academic departments, across disciplines, and even on campuses in other locations,” said Blackboard president Michael Chasen.

A first priority of the deal will be to integrate the Blackboard Learning System and Google Scholar, the firms said. Google Scholar provides a way to search for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers and articles, from academic publishers and universities. The integration through the Blackboard Building Block for Google Scholar will provide access to these scholarly references from courses within the Blackboard environment.

Blackboard will also offer a set of Google OneBox for Enterprise modules through a Blackboard Building Block for Google OneBox. The integration will enable targeted searches of an institution’s course catalogue, organization catalogue, and learning objects repository. Google OneBox for Enterprise is a feature of the Google Search Appliance which allows users to retrieve real-time content from various data sources across their institution.

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Washington Business Journal - October 10, 2006
Blackboard teams up with Google by Neil Adler
Staff Reporter

Blackboard, a provider of software and related services to the education industry, is partnering with online search giant Google. The D.C.-based company will launch a series of efforts to enhance search capabilities for students and faculty at thousands of academic institutions worldwide. Blackboard says it will integrate various services with Google's enterprise search technology to help facilitate deeper, more meaningful search capabilities for members of the academic community.

Blackboard is joining the Google Enterprise Professional program, becoming the first member of the program to focus on educational institutions. As part of the partnership, Blackboard's learning system will be integrated with Google Scholar, providing quick access to millions of scholarly references directly from courses within the Blackboard system. As a Google partner, Blackboard will also offer consulting services to assist academic institutions looking to leverage search capabilities across their organization.