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AU’s learning platform has been put out to tender

AU’s contract with Blackboard will expire soon, so the university will now invite tenders for AU’s future learning management system.

Aarhus University needs a learning platform that can support the university’s ambitions to offer students dynamic, user-friendly digital study systems.

This is the short version of the task that the university has just put out to tender.

In recent years, AU has been using the learning platform Blackboard, but in accordance with the Public Procurement Act, it is not possible to further extend the contract with the current supplier, and so the contract must be put out to tender. The goal is to identify the system that can offer the best solutions in regard to criteria such as educational and technical quality, price and implementation. 

The tender documents, which Blackboard and any other potential suppliers now have access to, include a specification of requirements which states the university’s technical, organisational and especially educational and didactic wishes and needs.

The specification of requirements has been prepared with the help of the teaching development centres at the faculties and is based on the EDU IT Hub’s experiences with operation and support of Blackboard.

The next step in the process is for interested companies to submit bids in a pre-qualification round until the deadline on 10 January 2019. After the deadline, Aarhus University will select some of the suppliers to expand on their proposals. 

The senior management team will make the final decision on the university’s future learning platform at the end of summer 2019.