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Facebook (News - Alert) is a website quite popular among youths, receiving millions of hits everyday by students for connecting with old friends and meeting new ones. Millions of those same students also log on to their institution's Blackboard system, to access their course materials, assignments, tests, and other important academic information.

 

But now Blackboard Inc. has launched a new free application that will enable these students to access their social and learning networks in one place.

 

Blackboard is a provider of educational enterprise technology and has launched a new free application, Blackboard Sync, which is a safe and secure application on the Facebook Platform. This application delivers course updates and other information to the students through Facebook. Students who elect to use Blackboard Sync can receive information on new assignments, discussion board postings, course materials, and even new grades while logged on to their Facebook accounts.

 

Aside from that, Blackboard Sync will also turn routine social interactions of the students into social learning opportunities, enabling them to easily find and connect with their classmates and utilize their Facebook accounts to create and join online and offline networks and groups to collaborate and study together.

 

Michael L. Chasen, president and CEO, Blackboard, said that Blackboard has been working to bring learning opportunities to students irrespective of their location, for more than a decade, and now Blackboard has brought learning to Facebook, giving millions of students the ability to simplify and be better connected to their academic lives. He noted that Blackboard Sync bridges the academic and social worlds of the students thereby allowing students to participate in a new kind of social learning community that can have a profound impact on their lives.

 

Zachary Girod, a graduate student at the University of Maryland, said ensuring that his tasks are completed and everything is planned out makes him stay on top of his classes, and Blackboard Sync makes a significant percentage of that workload even easier, helping him be a more successful student.

 

Girod added that a lot of the work students have to do involves group projects and collaboration, hence having access to academic alerts while they’re on Facebook lets them work more efficiently and informally with classmates and learn from their experiences.

 

Karen Gage, vice president, Product Strategy, Blackboard, said the demand for cutting-edge tools to communicate and collaborate online is increasing day-by-day among students, and Blackboard Sync is part of the company’s effort to meet that demand, noting that Blackboard Sync is a major step toward creating a truly boundless global community of social learners, as it combines the Blackboard community with the millions of students using Facebook. To know more about Blackboard Sync, please visit http://blackboard.com/communities/beyond.