Jan. 14 (Bloomberg) -- Blackboard Inc., the maker of software used by colleges to put lectures online, agreed to buy NTI Group Inc. for $182 million, adding technology that sends emergency alerts to primary school and university students.

Blackboard will pay $132 million in cash and $50 million in stock for closely held NTI, according to a statement from the Washington-based company. NTI's owners may get another $17 million in stock, depending on the business's performance.

Chief Executive Officer Michael Chasen, whose company helps colleges such as Seton Hall University put course material and lectures on the Internet, is expanding into mass e-mail and phone messages. That market will triple to $1.2 billion by 2011 in the U.S. as schools seek to avoid a repeat of last year's massacre at a Virginia university, according to Yankee Group.

``This has become a top priority for institutions,'' said Chasen, 36, a former education consultant at KPMG who co-founded Blackboard in 1997.

After a gunman killed 32 people and himself at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg last April, a state panel said school administrators should have acted earlier to warn students through a campuswide e-mail message. The university hadn't finished installing a system that would send a text message to all students' mobile phones, the panel found.

Blackboard fell 2 cents $35.99 at 4 p.m. New York time in Nasdaq Stock Market trading. The shares gained 34 percent last year.

The purchase of Sherman Oaks, California-based NTI should be completed before March 31 and will be the biggest deal in Blackboard's history, Chasen said. Wachovia Corp. and Dewey & LeBoeuf LLP advised Blackboard on the acquisition. UBS AG and Latham & Watkins LLP counseled NTI.

To contact the reporter on this story: Zachary R. Mider in New York at zmider1@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: January 14, 2008 16:24 EST