Blackboard and txttools Partner For Mass Notification Services
- Friday, November 26th, 2010
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Blackboard, which provides the Blackboard Connect mass notification service, and txttools, the UK provider of text messaging solutions for education, healthcare and government, have partnered to deliver mass notification services to clients in the UK and Ireland.
The partnership draws on Blackboard Connect’s experience delivering over 1bn voice, email and text messages and txttools’ pioneering work in two-way text messaging. With the partnership, txttools will market and sell Blackboard Connect mass notification services to existing and prospective clients.
With over 10 years of experience serving the text messaging needs of clients, txttools brings to the partnership well-established relationships with top academic, healthcare and municipal organisations in the UK and Ireland, where it serves over 50 percent of universities and colleges. The companies say the addition of Blackboard Connect’s multi-channel notification solutions will enable the companies to better serve a broader set of communications requirements.
“Combining the messaging expertise of txttools with Blackboard’s global commitment to education-focused institutions of all kinds creates a compelling offer for this market,” says Blackboard Connect president, Ed Miller. “We look forward to bringing the best of our respective solutions to strengthen the communications capabilities of institutions.”
Because many UK further and higher education institutions already use Blackboard to support their virtual learning environments (VLE), the companies believe the partnership offers a unique opportunity to help improve communication between instructors, students and the institution. With a new integration leveraging Blackboard Connect capabilities within the Blackboard Learn platform, instructors and students can stay up to date on coursework, class changes or individual performance – all on the mobile devices they prefer.
“As a customer of both Blackboard and txttools, the addition of Blackboard Connect seems like a natural extension to the txttools service, and I look forward to finding out more about how it can be used to further support our needs,” says Stephen Vickers, information services manager at the University of Edinburgh.