A new integration for using digital learning content from John Wiley & Sons, Inc., US, with the learning management system (LMS) from Blackboard Inc., US, is now available to students and faculty worldwide, the companies announced.
The solution gives students and faculty access to a collection of learning content and tools from Wiley's research-based, online teaching and learning environment, WileyPLUS, directly within the Blackboard Learn platform. Thousands of students and instructors across multiple disciplines participated in a full semester limited field trial and provided feedback to shape the integration, ensuring the highest quality experience for system administrators, faculty and students.
The solution seeks to create a seamless user experience that gives instructors the flexibility to search for and select pieces of content and embed them into their course workflow and automatically synchronise grades and data. Designed to meet varying levels of digital usage, the integration reportedly provides instructors with greater flexibility in course design and gives their students an easy to use, singular experience for navigating learning materials.
With the single sign-on, students can interact with digital content directly within their courses, moving from Wiley content and assignments to LMS tools like journals or discussions in a seamless workflow. The integration of Wiley's eTextbook, media resources and interactive assignments in Blackboard Learn allows instructors to better sequence their course using the activities and resources found in both WileyPLUS and Blackboard Learn. Students who participated in the field trial agreed that the integrated solution made them more likely to complete assignments, helped them learn and improved their grade.
In addition to single sign-on, deep linking and grade book synchronisation, the Blackboard Learn and WileyPLUS integration is said to provide unique tools that support several levels of content integration, ultimately yielding a more personalised experience than existing approaches, and further increasing the potential to positively impact the overall learning process.
The solution relies on the open education standard IMS Basic Learning Tools Interoperability (Basic LTI) and is built on the Blackboard Learn 9.1 platform, an open, extensible platform with an active development community and open APIs.
Nearly 2,000 institutions have reportedly adopted Blackboard Learn, Release 9.1, Blackboard's flagship learning management platform, to take advantage of its improved stability, greater workflow efficiencies for instructors and administrators and social learning tools. Blackboard Learn has a wide range of integrations that incorporate the company's approach to digital content integration with the LMS that enables instructors to easily find, adopt and share all types of content within their customised courses.
WileyPLUS is a research-based, online environment for effective teaching and learning that is offered with over 300 Wiley titles and is used in over 20 countries globally. It is said to incorporate the entire digital textbook with learning resources, practice and assessment for a personalised student learning experience that is proven to improve learning outcomes.
