Blackboard and Macmillan Partner to Integrate Macmillan's Digital Learning Products and Content with Blackboard Learn

LAS VEGAS, July 13, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Macmillan and Blackboard Inc. (Nasdaq: BBBB) announced today a new partnership that plans to enable seamless integration between Macmillan's digital learning offerings and the Blackboard Learn™ platform. The partnership responds to strong demand from faculty and administrators to access learning tools and content provided by Macmillan's publishers – which include Bedford/St. Martin's, WH Freeman, Worth Publishers, and Hayden McNeil – directly within the Blackboard Learn platform.

The partnership will allow Macmillan to deeply integrate its products with Blackboard's teaching and learning platform to provide a seamless user experience and to take full advantage of the capabilities of Macmillan's products and the Blackboard learning ecosystem. The integration plans to enable faculty and students at educational institutions to easily sign on and access Macmillan's digital content and course offerings with their Blackboard® credentials and to automate upload of grades and performance data into the Blackboard Learn gradebook. The net result plans to be a more user friendly, engaging, and effective teaching and learning experience.

"Blackboard has become the platform of choice for the management of teaching and learning in thousands of schools and universities, and our collaboration will allow us to fully leverage the capabilities of Blackboard Learn to deliver all of our digital content and learning systems to our instructors and students in ways that are simple and powerful," said Brian Napack, President of Macmillan. "Long term, we expect that this partnership will yield exciting innovations that will leverage the skills and assets of both companies."

The announcement was made at BbWorld®, Blackboard's annual user conference being held in Las Vegas this week. As part of the partnership, Macmillan becomes a Blackboard Premier Partner™ in the Blackboard Partnerships Program™. 

"We're pleased to partner with Macmillan to enable a simpler, more powerful workflow for clients and users who will benefit from being able to leverage the power of our combined solutions in a single place," said Matthew Small, Chief Business Officer at Blackboard. "This is an important addition to our overall strategy for digital content, and one that can help lead to wider adoption of Macmillan's high quality, discipline-specific content and tools."

For more information about Blackboard Learn, please visit http://www.blackboard.com/learn. For more information about Macmillan, please visit http://www.macmillan.com.

About Blackboard Inc.

Blackboard Inc. (Nasdaq: BBBB) is a global leader in enterprise technology and innovative solutions that improve the experience of millions of students and learners around the world every day. Blackboard's solutions allow thousands of higher education, K-12, professional, corporate, and government organizations to extend teaching and learning online, facilitate campus commerce and security, and communicate more effectively with their communities. Founded in 1997, Blackboard is headquartered in Washington, D.C., with offices in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia.

About Macmillan

Macmillan is a global publisher of educational content, tools, and services, fiction and nonfiction books, scientific information, magazines and digital media.  In the US, the group includes Bedford/St. Martin's; W.H. Freeman; Worth Publishers; Hayden McNeil; i>clicker; Farrar, Straus & Giroux; Henry Holt; St. Martin's Press; Tor Books; Picador; and Macmillan Audio. Macmillan is a subsidiary of Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck, GMbH, a global media company based in Stuttgart, Germany.  

Any statements in this press release about future expectations, plans and prospects for Blackboard and other statements containing the words "believes," "anticipates," "plans," "expects," "will," and similar expressions, constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors, including the factors discussed in the "Risk Factors" section of our Form 10-K filed on February 18, 2011 and Form 10-Q filed on May 9, 2011 with the SEC. In addition, the forward-looking statements included in this press release represent the Company's views as of July 13, 2011. The Company anticipates that subsequent events and developments will cause the Company's views to change. However, while the Company may elect to update these forward-looking statements at some point in the future, the Company specifically disclaims any obligation to do so. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing the Company's views as of any date subsequent to July 13, 2011.

SOURCE Blackboard Inc.; Macmillan