Concord Announces Participation in the Blackboard Building Blocks Program.

Business Editors

ATLANTA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 29, 2001

Collaboration seamlessly extends Blackboard's Course Management

functionality by enabling the management and sharing of centralized 

content items

Concord USA (www.concord-usa.com), a leading provider of content management solutions for education, today announced that it has become a founding member of Blackboard Inc.'s (www.blackboard.com) new Blackboard Building Blocks Program.

This partnership provides Blackboard customers with an easy way to connect the Masterfile CAM (Course Asset Management) System to their current installations of the Blackboard e-education platform.

Concord's Masterfile CAM fulfills the demand for resolution of four key challenges with the management of online content:

-- The ability to use and track multiple copies of a single content item in a
course or course system.

-- The seamless updating of multiple copies of the same item.

-- The ability to share content across courses for use by other instructors and
applications.

-- The ability to build a large scale content digital repository for a
multitude of users.

"The combination of Masterfile CAM and the Blackboard platform provides instructors with a seamless way to access a wide variety of institutional content while maintaining a common user experience," said Dan Cane, SVP of Research and Development at Blackboard. "The open architecture of Blackboard's technology through the Building Blocks Program, ultimately provides customers with a wider variety of features and functionalities for their e-Learning initiatives."

At its core, Masterfile CAM enables the effective management and sharing of online content items while constantly monitoring their URLs for continued integrity. Any authorized user may contribute or access content within Masterfile from any standard web browser.

"Concord is pleased to provide its content storage, management and communications solutions through Masterfile CAM and the Building Blocks program," said Howard Taylor, Executive VP for Marketing at Concord. "The distribution and repurposing of instructor developed content is vital for academic institutions as they expand their online course environments."

About Concord USA, Inc.

Concord USA, Inc. is located in Atlanta, Georgia and also has offices in Brisbane, Australia. Concord was established in 1987 for the purpose of developing Library Management Systems for schools and universities. In 1994 the development of Masterfile began and has continued to evolve, through input and recommendations from users, from a file and document management program to an advanced and highly scalable content management solution. Today Concord is a leader in knowledge and content management storage and communication systems. For more information about Masterfile please call 770-889-7432 ([e-mail]).

Keywords: Higher education, document management, knowledge management, Blackboard, online, education, concord