Most Blackboard Learn administrators have heard of Blackboard building blocks. Ever since the early days of the Blackboard Learn product, the company has worked to create a set of open APIs that would give developers the ability to create tools that could interact with Blackboard users. From journals and wikis, to data collection, to hosted web tools links, building blocks have been one of the driving forces for new technology integrations.
This has never been more true than today. In 2012, Blackboard Inc. began to release improvements to tools within Blackboard Learn using the building block technology originally created for third-party vendors and developers. This option would allow organizations to decide what tools they want within their Blackboard Learn instance and apply them without waiting for an upgrade. Since this change, understanding how to install, manage, and remove building blocks has become more important.