Blackboard, a leading education technology company for teaching, learning and student engagement, has announced that Umm Al-Qura University (UQU) selected Blackboard's leading learning management system, Blackboard Learn, to replace its legacy system. Umm Al-Qura University is one of the largest public Islamic universities in Saudi Arabia, serving over 100,000 students across 35 colleges. "We are honored that Umm Al-Qura University decided to switch to Blackboard Learn to deliver a more connected, engaging and integrated learning environment across all of its colleges," said Robert Speed, Vice President of the Middle East and Africa at Blackboard. "Our powerful LMS is more equipped to help the university deliver a superior teaching and learning experience for its faculty and students. We have a strong presence in Saudi Arabia and are committed to working with our partner on the ground to help our clients deliver on their mission." Blackboard Learn will help the university achieve Saudi Arabia's "Vision 2030" and the National Transformation Program (NTP), which set out an ambitious roadmap for education reform. Some of the key benefits of Learn include a connected experience across devices, ease of content creation and management and a range of digital assessment and social learning tools. "We felt that our old system left us out of sync with many of our peer institutions across Saudi Arabia and around the world, making it difficult for us to engage in endeavors such as joint training, knowledge transfer and exchange of e-learning resources," said Dr. Ahmed Hameed, Vice Deanship of E-Learning and Distance Education for Development and Entrepreneurship at Umm Al-Qura University. "Since switching to Blackboard, we have been able to deliver a more connected and engaging learning environment for our faculty and learners. We have also seen a reduction in costs with absolutely no impact on the quality of education we provide." The university is also leveraging Blackboard Collaborate, a simple and reliable online collaborative learning environment, SafeAssign, an originality-checker, and on-the-go access to coursework and other educational information through Blackboard's mobile solutions. To ensure a seamless transition, Blackboard is providing training on efficient content migration to Learn from the university's old system. — SG
