Anthology Together 2024: Introducing a New Look and Era

At its 2024 annual user conference, Anthology unveiled the company’s new brand identity and tagline—Power of Together™—along with the latest product enhancements and roadmaps.

CEO Bruce Dahlgren highlighted how the brand refresh reflects the power between education and technology and Anthology’s commitment to customer-centered innovation and excellence. Anthology has replaced its logo of multicolored vertical stripes with a simplified blue and green design that incorporates the caret symbol (^), representing power and exponential achievement.

New Blackboard^® LMS Release Seeks to Address AI Literacy, Support Faculty, and More

Blackboard, the company’s popular learning management system (LMS), was also highlighted at the conference. Nicolaas Matthijs, chief product officer, said that Blackboard is “the fastest evolving LMS over the past three years.” He shared how the solution’s latest product release continues to address the evolving needs of academic institutions.

Below are a few takeaways about Anthology’s product enhancements and roadmaps.

Gradebook Mastery View

Now available to customers, the new Gradebook Mastery view provides a visual representation of students’ progress, helping instructors spot learning gaps at the course and student levels. The benefits are twofold: instructors can modify their instructional strategies to best support students, and students can see how their course assignments contribute to their overall learning outcomes.

AI Conversations

Starting on September 5, 2024, Blackboard customers will have access to AI Conversations, a new activity type where students can gain experience using generative AI responsibly for assignments. Course instructors can review and assess student interactions with the AI tool, which is powered by Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI Service. The goal is to enhance AI literacy and better prepare students for using AI in the workplace responsibly.

Anthology Student 6-Month Enhancement Roadmap

Faculty Workload Management

With upcoming enhancements to Faculty Workload Management within Anthology Student, institutions will be able to track and, if needed, adjust faculty and instructor workloads to align with their responsibilities and institutional policies. The premium module is designed to help institutions automate workload, policy-to-staff association and maintenance, and assignment validation for all faculty. Anthology plans to make the latest enhancements available to customers in 3–6 months.

Automated Class Scheduling

Anthology also expects to release Automated Class Scheduling for Anthology Student within the next six months. This feature will leverage AI to reduce manual information entry, making the class scheduling process more efficient for institutional users.

To view a comprehensive list of product release details and announcements view Anthology’s website.

Addressing Customer Challenges

Anthology’s releases and updates align with customer needs and challenges for managing faculty, financial aid, and the student experience. Anthology customers should look for continued enhancements—including AI functionality—across Anthology’s products, especially its core constituent relationship management (CRM), LMS, and Student offerings.

Knowing that the ethical use of AI is at the forefront of every institution’s mind, Anthology used the conference as an opportunity to reinforce its commitment to developing and utilizing AI responsibly. In 2022, Anthology established its Trustworthy AI program, but it has focused on the issue since 2018.

Anthology is evolving the company with its new branding, tagline, vision, and mission, and we’re eager to see how it continues to work with its partners to innovate and develop tools that help higher education institutions worldwide.