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Fifteen Colleges Gain Access to Comprehensive Technology Platform Including the New Blackboard Outcomes System

WASHINGTON, DC--(MARKET WIRE)--May 16, 2007 -- The Mississippi State Board for Community and Junior Colleges has selected Blackboard Inc. (NasdaqGS:BBBB - News), a leading provider of educational enterprise software and services, to help improve access to high quality education and foster economic development across the state. The Mississippi Community College System, recently rated second most productive in the nation, is expanding opportunities to over 65,000 students across the 15-college system, through its multi-million dollar, multi-year investment, in a fully-hosted implementation of the Blackboard Academic Suite(TM), including the Blackboard Outcomes System(TM).
This statewide initiative demonstrates Mississippi's commitment to providing Web-based learning opportunities for its 21st-century students, while also enabling each college to review their performance and make investments and improvements where necessary.

"The Blackboard Academic Suite will provide an industry leading educational tool to every instructor, every workforce trainer, and every student," said Audra Kimble, Director of Distance Education of the Mississippi State Board for Community and Junior Colleges. "Also, the Blackboard Outcomes System and supporting strategic and technical services will provide us with an enterprise system designed for our specific program and institutional assessment needs. It will provide us greater insight into our institutional effectiveness, guide us in improvement initiatives, and assist us in meeting ever-increasing accountability standards."

The initiative also provides for the expansion of the Mississippi Virtual Community College (MSVCC), a consortium of the 15 community colleges that allows students to take courses from any campus anywhere in Mississippi while getting support services from his/her local college. MSVCC has experienced record enrollment each year, since first opening in Spring 2000, growing from 1,300 online course enrollments to currently over 36,000 online course enrollments.
"When we first met with leaders from the Mississippi Community College System, they expressed a variety of very specific goals they wanted to achieve, including delivering high quality education and training, improving competitiveness and meeting the diverse needs of the 15 colleges across their system," said Peter Segall, President of North American Higher Education for Blackboard. "We worked together closely for many months, to develop a strategic solution that would meet all of those needs and more. We applaud the vision and significant long term investment Mississippi is making, and anticipate an exciting road ahead."

The Blackboard Outcomes System, launched this January, is a comprehensive platform for managing continuous improvement processes across a higher education institution or a statewide system. It enables institutions to streamline the aggregation of assessment data, make evidence-based decisions, and improve student learning outcomes.