Overview
The partnership between Blackboard and Rustici Software goes back to 2010 when Blackboard recognized a need to provide a more comprehensive and reliable way to deliver SCORM content in their Learn platform. Using the Rustici Engine allows Blackboard to offer the most reliable SCORM player available to their customers and includes best in class support for handling eLearning standards.
The Challenge
Blackboard is focused on ensuring a positive, accessible and inclusive experience every time a user launches content on the Blackboard Learn platform, across any device. The new Ultra experience in Learn offers a dynamic, modern and mobile-friendly interface for instructors and students. As part of its continued development work with the Ultra experience, Blackboard was looking to update the content player in Learn to improve the mobile learning experience. Along with adding a mobile-friendly SCORM player to Learn, Blackboard also wanted to provide a more accessible player and to improve support for right to left languages.
The Solution
Rustici Engine plays a pivotal role in both the Learn Original and Ultra experiences, handling the delivery and tracking for all SCORM, AICC and xAPI packaged content. Not only does Rustici Engine provide the most reliable SCORM player available, the new modern player design in Rustici Engine is optimized for mobile learning and features a responsive design to automatically adjust the display, size and position of the title, progress bar and navigation controls of the SCORM player as well as the position of the course menu. The new modern player in Rustici Engine also offers more accessibility for keyboard navigation and screen reader use to support 508 compliance and supports right to left languages.
“The partnership with the team at Rustici Software plays a key role in the overall success of Learn’s ability to deliver SCORM content. We rely on the Rustici Engine to handle all of the details when it comes to supporting SCORM in Learn. In doing so, our teams are able to commit more time and resources to improving the overall Learn platform. When it came time to incorporate SCORM support in the Ultra experience, the fact that we were already using Rustici Engine made the delivery of this new and welcome feature to Ultra users that much easier.”
The Benefits
Delivering content with a responsive, mobile-first designed player
Updating the SCORM player in Learn (both Original and Ultra) with the Rustici Engine modern player allows Blackboard to improve how content is delivered on mobile devices. The responsive player in Rustici Engine automatically adjusts based on the launching device and provides a more consistent, mobile-friendly experience.
Providing a more inclusive learner experience
With Rustici Engine’s modern player, playing SCORM content in Learn is now more accessible for keyboard navigation and easily cooperates with screen readers. The modern player in Rustici Engine also features an updated menu, buttons and navigation so that screen readers can now read each of these items properly.
Improving language support
Rustici Engine supports 26 languages in the user facing player, including right to left languages. By using Rustici Engine, Learn is able to deliver a more customized user experience, literally having the player talk in the preferred user language based on a specified culture code or the user’s browser settings.
The Results
With Rustici Engine, the team at Blackboard is able to meet the challenge of providing optimized mobile interactions and more inclusive learning experiences when it comes to delivering SCORM, AICC and xAPI packaged content in the Learn platform. By partnering with Rustici Software, Blackboard has access to the top eLearning standards experts for ongoing support for SCORM and xAPI, and they are able to direct their developer resources to focus on evolving the overall Learn platform and Ultra experience, leaving the details of SCORM support to the experts.
Using the latest version of Rustici Engine, Blackboard adds SCORM support in the Ultra experience and has updated Learn Original with more user friendly features when it comes to launching and tracking SCORM, AICC and xAPI packaged content.
Ready to learn more?
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