Blackboard history

In June 1999, the company capped two years of explosive growth with a $12.2 million second round of venture financing.

In July, Blackboard also announced that its 1999 application for a patent covering the company’s e-learning software had finally been granted.

In June 2001, Blackboard expanded its unique global alliance with Microsoft with a codevelopment and comarketing agreement for emerging Internet technologies.

In early 2001, the company named cofounder Michael Chasen as chief executive officer.

As reported ondailyprincetonian.com, initial announcements by Blackboard Inc. in 2001 were that new versions of its software would provide additional features only to those running Blackboard on Microsoft NT servers.

Henn B (2001) Microsoft-Blackboard partnership stirs debate.

In May 2002, Blackboard announced an alliance to market products and services in India’s e-learning market with LearningMate, a division of the Delhi-based Educomp Datamatics Ltd.

The firm purchased Prometheus, a solution built by George Washington University, in 2002.

EXPANDING GLOBALLY IN 2002

Blackboard began 2002 by making its fourth online learning sector acquisition.

Carnevale D (2003) Study of Wisconsin professors finds drawbacks to course management

Galli P (2003) O’Reilly gazes into the future of open source. www.eweek.com.

McCarthy, Ellen, “Wall Street Welcomes Blackboard; D.C. Company’s Stock Closes Up 43% on First Trading Day,” Washington Post, June 19, 2004.

With Chairman Matthew Pittinsky pursuing a Ph.D. in education at Columbia University and living part time in New York, 2004 began with cofounder, President, and CEO Michael Chasen in charge of managing Blackboard’s day-to-day operations.

In the Spring of 2004, 7,100 people taught and learned in virtual classrooms powered by Blackboard’s products, a number that will grow to approximately 40,000 in the Fall of 2004 as current clients alone bring additional courses on-line.

Pittinsky M (2004) The networked learning environment: Overview white paper.

Bonanos, Paul, and Kate Gibson, “VCs Reap Weak Returns from WebCT,” TheDeal.com, October 14, 2005.

Blackboard Inc. (BBBB) is traded on the NASDAQ exchange and through the course of 2005, the trading price approximately doubled.

Servonsky EJ, Daniels WL, Davis BL (2005) Evaluation of Blackboard as a platform for distance

Adkins SS (2005) Wake-up call: Open Source LMS. www.learningcircuits.org.

The company continued to court the K–12 market with its July 2006 release of Blackboard K–12 Starter Edition.

________, “Blackboard Sues Rival over Alleged Patent Infringement,” Chronicle of Higher Education, August 11, 2006.

In October 2006, the company launched a partner initiative with Google Inc., which allowed Blackboard to integrate Google Scholar and Google OneBox for Enterprise into its web-based learning-management system.

SWALLOWING THE COMPETITION IN 2006

Bradford P (2006) The Blackboard Learning System.

By 2006, the firm's learning platform software was used in more than 40% of United States college campuses and the company had gained a significant worldwide market share.

In 2006, Blackboard completed the acquisition of its largest competitor, WebCT Inc, enlarging its share of the higher education market to between 65 and 75 percent.

Blackboard began 2007 with an early January rollout of Blackboard Outcomes System, a comprehensive platform designed to cover all academic and administrative processes of a higher learning institution in a single product.

With the full integration of WebCT’s course-management systems with its other products scheduled for completion in the second or third quarter of 2007, the company appeared on the brink of achieving steady growth in what looked like a balanced market.

Having launched just before the dot-com boom and having survived the dot-com bust, Blackboard emerged in 2007 after just a decade in business as a stable giant in the e-learning industry.

Gilfus left in 2008 as he saw the Blackboard Companies grow into an acquisition model, and no longer a company rich with internal technology innovation.

In 2009, the purchase of ANGEL Learning increased Blackboard’s client base to nearly 6,000.

Blackboard has launched a free hosted course management service, one aimed at wooing individual instructors who lack access to automated course management or who are disaffected by the systems in use at their schools.Feb 10, 2011

After the difficult passage through the loss of Moodle certification in 2018 that led to the sale of Moodlerooms, Blackboard was in financial difficulties and tried to improve its situation.