Formerly Anthology, Blackboard is now an independent company focused entirely on teaching and learning. Its portfolio centers on Blackboard LMS, Blackboard Ally, Blackboard Illuminate, Blackboard Evaluate, and institutional effectiveness solutions that support learning delivery, accessibility, analytics, course feedback, and continuous improvement. Blackboard describes itself as an education company that builds technology for transformational teaching and learning and says it serves thousands of institutions worldwide.
Blackboard’s current focus spans higher education and government learning environments, with a product set that connects instruction, learner support, accessibility, assessment, analytics, and institutional planning. The company’s positioning emphasizes usability, accessibility, responsible AI innovation, and a stronger customer support model around its teaching and learning portfolio.
Offerings, Capabilities, and Integrations
Blackboard combines AI-enabled learning delivery with accessibility, reporting, course evaluation, and institutional effectiveness capabilities. Across its LMS experience, Blackboard highlights AI Design Assistant, content design, plagiarism detection, flexible grading, native mobile access, progress tracking, communication tools, and analytics designed to help instructors, students, and administrators act on insight more quickly.
Its ecosystem is built around interoperability as well as product depth. Blackboard promotes hundreds of partner integrations, a standards-first approach using LTI- and API-based connections, and cloud file integrations with tools such as OneDrive, Box, Dropbox, and Google Drive. It also extends the platform with implementation, adoption, accessibility, course design, managed services, and professional development offerings that help customers deploy and sustain the technology more effectively.
Products and Services
- Blackboard LMS: Blackboard LMS is Blackboard’s flagship learning management system for higher education and government, with built-in generative AI capabilities, content creation and grading tools, mobile access, accessibility support, analytics, and a broad integration framework.
- Blackboard Ally: Blackboard Ally helps institutions improve digital accessibility across LMS content, websites, and other digital experiences through alternative formats, instructor guidance, and accessibility reporting.
- Blackboard Illuminate: Blackboard Illuminate is an analytics and reporting platform for higher education that unifies data from Blackboard solutions and other sources, with reporting, data exploration, and developer access through a Snowflake-based data environment.
- Blackboard Evaluate: Blackboard Evaluate is a course evaluation solution that automates survey administration and reporting, supports nationally normed instruments, and integrates with LMS environments through SaaS delivery, LTI, and authentication options.
- Blackboard Outcomes: Blackboard Outcomes provides embedded outcomes measurement, curriculum mapping, dashboards, rubrics, and cross-level reporting for assessment and accreditation. Blackboard positions it as included with Blackboard LMS instances at no additional cost.
- Blackboard Accreditation: Blackboard Accreditation is a collaborative accreditation platform for evidence collection, progress monitoring, faculty credentialing, and self-service report generation for accreditor review.
- Blackboard Planning: Blackboard Planning supports institutional planning with collaborative workflows, granular permissions, gap analysis, progress dashboards, customizable templates, and integrations with other Blackboard solutions.
- Blackboard Program Review: Blackboard Program Review centralizes internal program review through custom templates, evidence-based reporting, annual effectiveness planning, and built-in support for CAS standards.
- Blackboard Milestone: Blackboard Milestone supports badging, micro-credentialing, competency assessment, and guided learning pathways, and it can connect with Blackboard achievements to issue badges based on performance.
- Blackboard Professional Development: Blackboard Professional Development offers educator and administrator training across pedagogy, AI, accessibility, course design, system administration, and workforce learning, with courses that award certificates and microcredentials.
- Implementation & Adoption Services: Implementation & Adoption Services provides deployment support, onboarding, integration training, accessibility consulting, course design assistance, adoption guidance, and managed services to help customers configure and operationalize Blackboard LMS.
Target Customers
Blackboard primarily targets colleges and universities that need a modern teaching and learning environment for faculty, students, instructional designers, academic leaders, and support teams. Its portfolio is built for institutions that want to combine LMS delivery with accessibility, reporting, course evaluation, and outcomes measurement rather than manage those needs in disconnected systems.
Blackboard also serves government agencies and workforce learning organizations that need secure, scalable training environments. Within institutions, its solutions are relevant to accessibility leaders, institutional research and analytics teams, assessment offices, accreditation teams, planners, and program review stakeholders responsible for continuous improvement and compliance workflows.
Cloud Integrations and Marketplace
- AWS Marketplace: Blackboard maintains a verified AWS Marketplace seller presence and also highlights a strategic AWS relationship used to deliver teaching and learning solutions, including AWS GovCloud deployments for Blackboard LMS.
- Microsoft Azure Marketplace: Blackboard Learn is listed in Microsoft’s marketplace as a Microsoft Entra ID application that enables enterprise single sign-on and user access management for existing Blackboard Learn customers.
Key People
- Bruce Dahlgren: Chief Executive Officer
- Matthew Pittinsky: Incoming Chief Executive Officer
- Kevin Goffinet: Chief Operating Officer
- Garrick Bernstein: Chief Financial Officer
- Nicolaas Matthijs: Chief Product Officer
- Cynthia Haynie: Chief Technology Officer
- John Johasky: Chief Sales Officer
- Josh Portnoy: Chief Customer Officer
- Brian Hoffmann: Chief People Officer
- Michael Pohorylo: Chief Legal Officer
- Amy Rhodes: SVP of Global Marketing and Communications
Key Facts
- Headquarters: Washington, District of Columbia, United States
- Employees: Approximately 2,700
- Annual Revenue: $250M-$300M
- Parent Company: Investor group led by Oaktree Capital Management and Nexus Capital Management
- Subsidiaries: None
- Publicly Listed: Privately held
Analyst Recognitions
- IDC: Leader in the 2025 IDC MarketScape: North America Cloud-Enabled and SaaS Learning Management Systems in Higher Education Vendor Assessment.
