Blackboard History and Statistics

History:

In the late 1990's Bethel predicted that the future of higher education would involve online course management. Bethel purchased its first content management system Web Course in a Box, to provide instructors the ability to mange courses online.  Web Course in  a Box was sparsely used throughout the institution until the fall of 2000 when Bethel committed institutional funding and resources to Purchasing Blackboard a new course management system. 

Blackboard was released to the campus for the Fall term of 2000.  At first there were very few instructors who took advantage of this new technology.  (See figure below) As time proceeded and the functionality of both blackboard and the internet grew, more and more professors took part in using Blackboard as tool for instruction and administration of their courses.   In 2003 the number of instructors and courses on blackboard had increased exponentially. (See figure below) This prompted ITS to reexamine the support structure for this increasingly important course management tool. 

In January of 2003, ITS commissioned a blackboard advisory group to assist in making increasingly more difficult decisions that affected the entire institution.  Members of the Blackboard advisory committee currently reflect every subset of the University; including, the college of arts and science, the college of adult and professional studies, graduate school, and the seminary.

Currently:

Blackboard is the Bethel University Learning Management System.  We will be transitioning to Moodle beginning Fall 2010.

Overall Summary of Usage
Number of Active Courses	2332
Number of Active Users	5662
Number of Users	13671
Number of Instructors	748
Page Views on Most Active Date	144975
Average Page Views Per Day	32030
	More statistics - by year and college

Blackboard Course History at Bethel University by College