June 24, 2009 This week Blackboard’s new head of course-management software, Ray Henderson, sent a letter to customers pledging that the company will do more to follow industry software standards, and to participate more actively in their development. Blackboard has long played a role in the education-technology standards developed by the IMS Global Learning Consortium. But in his letter, Mr. Henderson admits that the company “has not necessarily been a consistent standards leader.” Among the pledges Blackboard makes in the letter is to offer full support for the so-called Common Cartridge, which lets publishers create plug-ins that they know will work with any course-management system that follows the standard. One of the stated goals of the standard is to “reduce vendor/platform lock-in,” so the plug-in components will work even if a college switches to another course-management system. “As our first new step towards leadership in standards, I’m excited to share that we are committing to fully support both the import and export of this format,” Mr. Henderson said in the letter. Mr. Henderson has long been active in standards development, as was Angel Learning, where he was an executive before Blackboard bought the company this year. “While we need to complement these words with the deeds of shipping software — I hope this message provides a sense of direction that you may expect from Blackboard as we review our approach and commitment to this important area of industry collaboration,” he concluded in the letter. Michael L. Chasen, president and chief executive of Blackboard, elaborated on the policy change in an e-mail interview. “As we’ve looked harder at how we can best support our clients, especially given where we are in the e-learning industry today, we felt it was time to take a stepped-up approach to standards,” he said. “Following the ANGEL acquisition, we have an opportunity to push harder on interoperability by driving hard to strengthen support for standards in e-learning, especially with the leadership of someone like Ray Henderson who has spent a career doing just that.” http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/3844/blackboard-pledges-to-follow-open-standards-more-closely