Expanding Education Opportunities in Chile
Since its foundation in 1988, the Universidad de Las Américas (UDLA) has grown to become a key driver of higher education in Chile, providing quality education to more than 30,000 learners across nine campuses located in the cities of Santiago, Viña del Mar y Concepción and offering more than 50 undergraduate and graduate programs. UDLA offers opportunities to access higher education to all those who wish to develop into professionals. To achieve this, they offer a generous scholarship program, with 85% of students receiving support.
An aspect of their success has been the rapid adoption of online learning. UDLA supports nearly 6,000 fully online learners—a staggering increase from just 100 in 2020—with online master’s programs proving particularly popular. The shift to online learning has enabled new student cohorts to access a quality education, including large groups of adult learners aged 25 and above and many students from outside UDLA’s traditional catchment areas in the major cities.
The Challenge
Developing a Simplified and Insightful Learning Environment
During the pandemic, UDLA maintained its academic activities through a comprehensive system of institutional platforms for online study, which allowed its students and faculty to access content from each subject and supplementary material.
Subsequently, it outlined a digital transformation plan that it is currently focused on advancing, and it centers on three strategic objectives:
The Solution
Embracing the Breadth of the Blackboard Learning Platform
UDLA chose Blackboard® as their learning management system (LMS) in 2019, initially as a complement to Moodle. Over time, Blackboard became their preferred LMS, and by 2025, all programs at UDLA are taught exclusively using Blackboard. In early 2024, they completed a full migration to the latest Blackboard version, Ultra.
To meet their digital transformation objectives, UDLA leveraged several premium capabilities within the Blackboard suite, including Anthology® Ally for accessibility, Anthology® Evaluate to assess faculty performance, and Anthology® Illuminate for academic insights that can fuel institutional strategy.
Insights Delivered
A Significant Uplift in Student Engagement
The transition to Blackboard has led to an improved experience for users across all modalities. Student satisfaction increased by 10% between 2022 and 2025, with online learners—who rely heavily on the LMS—leading the way with a 13% uplift. This corresponds with student retention for online programs growing from 60% in 2023 to 68% in 2025.
Blackboard has a range of advantages. It offers a much more intuitive user experience and comes with artificial intelligence (AI) features which make a big difference. Around 46% of our learners access the LMS using their mobile devices, and Blackboard provides a much richer experience for these students. The insights on student progress are also valuable, as they show students how they are progressing and outline the path to their goals.
Michelle Bass del Campo, Online Learning Director, Universidad de Las Américas
All components of the Blackboard platform have contributed to this growth. Crucial for improving student outcomes is providing extra efficiency for instructors, and Blackboard has enabled this in several ways. The creation and easy replication of course templates have significantly reduced the time required for instructional design processes across UDLA’s 10,000+ courses, with the AI Design Assistant providing further efficiency. This allows instructors to focus more on the needs of their learners.
Anthology Ally is powering UDLA’s pursuit of universal accessibility for their courses. Instructors can now access tools that allow them to create accessible content natively within the LMS, leading to an impressive increase in the percentage of fully accessible courses. UDLA aims to achieve 100% accessibility by 2025, and their Ally dashboard that the institution helped develop based on the available data provides detailed, up-to-date analytics on their progress.
The addition of Anthology Evaluate as a feedback mechanism from students has streamlined the process of assessing faculty performance, which had previously involved different steps for each teaching modality. Consolidating this into a single platform not only provides organizational efficiency but also gives instructors more transparency in their professional evaluation and growth opportunities. And Anthology Illuminate has given institutional leaders expanded visibility on student performance, allowing UDLA to implement new strategies for student support and retention.
Finally, enabling and integrating these varied capabilities has been facilitated by a strong relationship with the Anthology team. By building a collaborative and supportive partnership, UDLA has been able to trial a number of these technologies and measure results before wider implementation.
One of the biggest benefits of Blackboard is the quality of the team supporting us. They listen to our concerns, visit us regularly, and deliver training to different parts of our institution. This is a distinguishing factor that has allowed for our internal development.
Michelle Bass del Campo, Online Learning Director, Universidad de Las Américas
When combined, the result is a data-driven and connected learning ecosystem. By embracing the breadth of capabilities within the Blackboard platform, UDLA has delivered an improved experience for both instructors and students, with all the insights at their fingertips to continue optimizing moving forward.
Epilogue
Anthology thanks Michelle Bass del Campo and her team at UDLA for their years of successful partnership. As outlined in their submission for the 2025 Catalyst Awards, they have a resolute ambition to continue to be a global leader in data-informed education and we’re committed to supporting them every step of the way.
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