Blackboard announces winners of the 2026 Catalyst Awards. Thirty institutions across eight countries recognized for teaching and learning excellence WASHINGTON, DC, UNITED STATES, June 17, 2026 / EINPresswire.com / - Blackboard today announced the winners of the 2026 Catalyst Awards, its annual program recognizing institutions and individuals driving meaningful change in education. This year's awards honor excellence across eight categories, highlighting the many ways organizations across higher education, government, and professional learning are improving outcomes, expanding access, and elevating the learner experience. The 2026 award winners were selected from a total of 136 submissions from 19 countries, one of the most competitive and creative pools in the program's history. Submissions were evaluated on criteria including the results achieved and the initiative's potential to serve as a best practice for the broader education community. Nominees and winners will be honored at Building Blackboard Together (BbT26), Blackboard's flagship user conference, taking place July 13-15 in Dallas, Texas. "What makes the Blackboard community exceptional is its members' commitment to sharing ideas, challenging conventions, and helping one another succeed," said Bruce Dahlgren, CEO of Blackboard. "This year's Catalyst Award winners represent the very best of that community. Their leadership, dedication, and results are making a measurable difference in classrooms, campuses, and communities worldwide." Assessment and Institutional Effectiveness: Recognizing institutions who have strengthened their assessment practices and driven meaningful behavioral change through the use of Blackboard's Institutional Effectiveness solutions. - Augusta Technical College, USA. Dr. Amanda Bylczynski - University of Connecticut, USA. Dr. Sally Chamberland and Kaitlyn Anderson - University of the Cumberlands, USA. Academic Affairs Blackboard Adoption & Engagement: Celebrating system administrators who drive successful Blackboard adoption through strategic leadership, faculty support, and continuous improvement. - National Aviation Academy, USA. Geremy Paoletti and Richard DeBord - Sam Houston State University Online, USA. SHSU Online Operations: Dr. Ruth Chisum - University of Tabuk, Saudi Arabia. Deanship of eLearning: Dr. Ali Alshammari - University of the West of England Bristol, United Kingdom. Digital Learning Team: Glenn Duckworth, Alice Denny, and Izzy Levy - Youngstown State University, USA. Youngstown State Online's Instructional Design and Development Center Ethical AI Leadership: Honoring institutions advancing responsible, transparent, and inclusive approaches to AI that promote trust and equitable outcomes for learners and educators. - King Faisal University, Saudi Arabia. Deanship of eLearning and Information Technology: Dr. Ali Saeed Alzahrani, Dr. Eid Mohammad Albalawi, and Dr. Mosleh Hmoud Al-Adhaileh. - Lamar University, USA. The Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning/University Innovation - University of Phoenix, USA. Academic AI Pillar Implementation Team: Dr. Marc Booker, Emily Breuker, Bridget Beville, and Doris Savron Government Learning Transformation: Recognizing government organizations that leverage Blackboard to deliver innovative, mission-driven training and workforce development programs that strengthen readiness and performance. - Oak Ridge Enhanced Technology and Training Campus, USA. ORETTC Capabilities Team - Texas Division of Emergency Management (TDEM), USA. Innovation in Accessibility: Recognizing institutions using Blackboard and/or Ally to create more accessible and inclusive learning experiences. - Central Arizona College, USA. Digital Accessibility Team - Coppin State University, USA. Innovation, Development, Education, and Assessment (IDEA) Team - Gordon Institute of Business Science, South Africa. Digital Education: Liezl Wagenaar, Danhesree Moodley, and Samantha Gladysek - The University of Law, United Kingdom. Technology Enhanced Learning & Teaching Team: Kerri Trounce, Jack Gibbons, and Steve Cherry Leading Change: Honoring institutions that use Blackboard to drive transformational change on campus and across the wider education community. - Boston University, USA. BU Virtual: Wendy Colby, Jennifer Jackson and Kaylin Goncalves - Universidad de Las Américas, Chile. Michelle Bass Del Campo - Universidad Internacional de Valencia, Spain - University of Pretoria, South Africa. University of Pretoria E-Education Unit - University of Reading, United Kingdom. Technology Enhanced Learning Teaching Excellence: Celebrating instructors who set the standard for high-quality teaching within Blackboard. These educators apply strong pedagogy, intentional design, and dynamic digital practices to create engaging and inclusive learning environments. - Jouf University, Saudi Arabia. - The University of Sheffield, United Kingdom. MSc HCRD Course Team - Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas, Peru. Jessica Vlasica Training & Professional Development: Highlighting institutions and corporations that use Blackboard to elevate training and development for educators and staff. Their programs strengthen skills, support technology adoption, and foster organizational growth. - Norfolk State University, USA. The Office of Extended Learning/NSU Online Team - Odessa College, USA. Professional Learning Center - The University of Notre Dame Australia, Australia. Michelle Katavatis and the Innovation & Design Team - Universidad del Pacífico, Peru. Gestión del Aprendizaje: Christian Alberto Jibaja Bernuy - University of Maryland, Baltimore County, USA. Instructional Technology Team About Blackboard Blackboard delivers the digital environment for transformational teaching and learning. World Education News Networken serve thousands of institutions with the industry's most AI-advanced LMS, Ally for accessibility, Evaluate for course effectiveness, and institutional effectiveness solutions that put educators and learners at the center. World Education News Networken is an education company that builds technology. Learn more at blackboard.com. Legal Disclaimer: EIN Presswire provides this news content "as is" without warranty of any kind. World Education News Networken do not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the author above.

Learning management systems with AI and the vendor due diligence update. By Basel Ismail May 30, 2026 Every major LMS vendor shipped AI features in 2023 and 2024. Canvas added AI-assisted rubric generation and a student-facing chatbot. Blackboard (now under Anthology) rolled out AI-powered course design tools and predictive analytics. Moodle integrated an AI subsystem that supports content generation, question creation, and text summarization. These features are genuinely useful. They also create FERPA problems that most institutional due diligence questionnaires haven't caught up with yet. The core issue is straightforward: AI features in LMS platforms process student education records. Under FERPA (20 U.S.C. 1232g), education records include virtually any information directly related to a student that is maintained by the institution or a party acting for the institution. When a student interacts with an AI chatbot inside Canvas, that interaction likely constitutes an education record. When Blackboard's predictive analytics engine ingests grades, assignment submissions, login frequency, and engagement metrics to flag at-risk students, it is processing education records at scale. The question for your IT and compliance teams is whether your existing vendor agreements and due diligence processes actually account for this. What changed with AI features. Traditional LMS deployments were relatively clean from a FERPA perspective. The institution controlled the data. The vendor hosted it. You had a standard school official exception under 34 CFR 99.31(a)(1)(i)(B), documented in your contract, and the vendor agreed to use the data only for the purposes for which it was disclosed. Simple enough. AI features complicate this in a few specific ways: * Training data flows. Does the vendor use student interaction data to train or fine-tune its AI models? If so, that data is flowing beyond the scope of the original disclosure purpose. Instructure (Canvas's parent company) has stated that customer data is not used to train its AI models, but the specifics of what counts as "customer data" versus "usage telemetry" versus "anonymized interaction logs" matter enormously. You need contractual language that is precise about this, not just a FAQ answer. * Third-party AI subprocessors. Several LMS vendors are integrating AI capabilities through partnerships with OpenAI, Anthropic, or other foundation model providers. When a student's essay gets sent to an external API for AI-powered feedback, that student's education record just left your vendor's environment and entered a subprocessor's environment. Your FERPA compliance chain now extends one more link. The Department of Education's 2011 guidance on outsourcing institutional functions (the "school official" guidance) requires that the party receiving the data be under the direct control of the institution with respect to the use and maintenance of education records. Can you demonstrate that control over a foundation model API? * Predictive analytics and profiling. Blackboard's retention and engagement analytics create derived data about students. Is a "risk score" an education record? Almost certainly yes, if it is maintained by the institution or its agent and is directly related to a student. Parents and eligible students have a right to inspect and review education records under FERPA. Can a student request to see their AI-generated risk profile? Can they challenge it? Your vendor agreement should address this. The due diligence questions you should be asking. If your institution last updated its LMS vendor due diligence questionnaire before 2023, it probably doesn't cover AI-specific data flows. Here is what should be on the list now: * Model training: Does any student data, including interaction logs, prompt/response pairs, or behavioral data, get used to train, fine-tune, or improve AI models? If the vendor claims anonymization, what specific technique is used, and has it been validated against re-identification risk? * Subprocessor disclosure: Which third-party AI providers receive student data? What are the contractual terms between your LMS vendor and those subprocessors regarding data retention, use limitations, and deletion? * Data residency: Where is AI processing happening? This matters for institutions subject to state-level student privacy laws (like California's SOPIPA or Illinois's ISSPA) in addition to FERPA. * Record access and correction: Can the institution access, export, and correct AI-generated records about students? If the system generates a predictive score or behavioral profile, is it surfaced in a way that satisfies FERPA's inspection and review requirements? * Opt-out mechanisms: Can students or the institution disable AI features selectively? What happens to data already processed by AI features if the institution later decides to turn them off? * Incident response: If an AI subprocessor experiences a breach involving student data, what is the notification timeline? The vendor's breach notification obligations should explicitly cover AI subprocessor incidents. * Audit rights: Does your agreement give you the right to audit or obtain audit reports (SOC 2, for example) covering the AI components specifically, not just the legacy LMS infrastructure? Vendor-Specific notes. A few things worth flagging on the major platforms as of early 2025: Canvas (Instructure): Instructure was acquired by Thoma Bravo in 2020 for $2 billion and has been investing heavily in AI. Their AI assistant features are increasingly integrated rather than optional add-ons. Instructure published an AI data use policy, but institutions should push for contractual commitments rather than relying on published policies that can change with a website update. Blackboard/Anthology: The 2022 merger of Blackboard and Anthology created a combined entity with a large product surface area. Their Illuminate Analytics and Predict tools are AI-heavy. The challenge here is that the merger consolidated multiple legacy platforms with different data handling architectures. Ask specifically about which backend systems process data for AI features and whether the data governance framework is unified across the combined product suite. Moodle: Moodle's open-source model creates a different risk profile. The AI subsystem (introduced in Moodle 4.x) allows institutions to plug in different AI providers. This is flexible but puts more responsibility on the institution to vet each AI provider connection. If your Moodle instance is self-hosted, you have more control. If you are using a Moodle partner for hosting, the due diligence questions above apply to both the hosting partner and whatever AI backends are configured. The enforcement landscape. The Department of Education's Student Privacy Policy Office (SPPO) has not yet brought a high-profile enforcement action specifically targeting AI features in LMS platforms. But the groundwork is there. The SPPO issued notes in 2023 reinforcing that technology vendors operating as school officials must comply with FERPA's use and redisclosure limitations. The FTC has also been active on AI and data practices more broadly; its 2023 enforcement actions against companies like Rite Aid (for AI-powered facial recognition with inadequate safeguards) signal a willingness to go after AI systems that process sensitive data without appropriate controls. The $650,000 settlement with Edmodo in 2023 by the FTC, while focused on COPPA rather than FERPA, involved an ed-tech platform and should be read as a warning about the regulatory direction. State attorneys general are also increasingly active. New York's Education Law 2-d and its implementing regulations impose vendor requirements that go beyond FERPA, including data security and privacy plans that must be publicly available. If your institution operates in multiple states, the patchwork of state student privacy laws adds another layer to vendor due diligence. How FirmAdapt addresses this. FirmAdapt's platform is built to map vendor data flows against specific regulatory requirements, including FERPA, state student privacy laws, and institutional policies. For institutions evaluating AI features in LMS platforms, FirmAdapt can model the data processing chain from student interaction through AI subprocessors and flag gaps between your contractual commitments and the actual data flows described in vendor documentation. Because FirmAdapt's own AI architecture is compliance-first, it processes institutional data within defined boundaries and does not use customer data for model training. This means you can use FirmAdapt to assess your LMS vendor's AI practices without creating the same category of risk you are trying to evaluate. The platform supports ongoing monitoring, so when vendors update their AI features or subprocessor relationships, your due diligence stays current rather than becoming a point-in-time snapshot that ages out within a quarter. Ready to uncover operational inefficiencies and learn how to fix them with AI? Try FirmAdapt free with 10 analysis credits. No credit card required.

Blackboard executes interactive Snapchat experience zone at MMA Impact 2026. May 19, 2026 Blackboard recently executed a two-day experiential activation for Snapchat at MMA Impact 2026 in Gurgaon, bringing an interactive experience zone to life for media and marketing professionals from across Delhi NCR. Designed as an engaging showcase of Snapchat's products and innovations, the experience encouraged attendees to explore, participate, and interact across multiple touchpoints throughout the venue. One of the key highlights of the activation was the AI Booth, where guests created personalised avatars and received printed photo strips, making it a popular attraction during the event. Attendees also experienced an immersive Spectacles demo setup that offered a firsthand look at the product. The experience zone further featured Sponsored Snaps showcases, demonstrating how brands are using Snapchat to create impactful campaigns and storytelling experiences. From conceptualisation and creative planning to production and on-ground execution, Blackboard managed the entire experience end-to-end. Over the course of the two-day event, the activation space emerged as a lively hub for conversations, curiosity, and engagement, reflecting Snapchat's interactive and community-driven approach.