Blackboard Mobile enters the German HE market

Originally published on the Blackboard Blogs by Michelle Soares

Blackboard Mobile has successfully entered the German higher education market with the launch of RUB Mobile, a Blackboard app developed specifically for Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB). With approximately 34,000 students total, RUB is not only one of Germany’s largest universities, but also one of Germany’s strongest research universities that have made it to the final round of Germany’s Excellence Initiative in 2007 and 2011.

The RUB Mobile app will officially be launched during the RUB Mobile Day taking place on campus on 22 November 2011, an event organized by RUB intended to introduce the RUB Mobile app to students and staff. RUB came up with a number of promotional activitiesfor the launch. The RUB app will be promoted by means of promotional teams awaiting students and staff at the main entrances of subway and bus stations leading to the campus, easily recognizable by their red RUB Mobile t-shirts with the QR-code for the official RUB Mobile website printed on them. Posters, tabletents, postcards, press releases and radio interviews, tweets, Blackboard giveaways and a Facebook fanpage are a part of the promotional activities. In addition, Blackboard and the Ruhr-Universität Bochum are jointly organizing a contest among RUB students and staff in which contestants are challenged to unleash their creativity. It is an ideas competition in which contestants have to demonstrate how RUB Mobile supports teaching and learning, anytime anywhere. Contest submissions will be in the form of a video/animation, design/illustration, or photo. The judges, consisting of both Blackboard and RUB representatives, will award the top three submissions with great prizes.