I am back from the Blackboard Users Conference in Baltimore. Two and a half days of information overload. Here are some highlights of the things I thought/learned about.
---BLACKBOARD SYSTEM---
We are currently running Blackboard Learning System Release 6 Application Pack 1. App Pack 2 came out last summer, just as we upgraded to Bb 6. It had too many known bugs for us to apply. App Pack 3 was just released for "General Availability." That means it has gone through beta testing and early release testing. A number of changes were made in order to correct problems. It should be stable at this point. Here are some features that (I think) are included in these two app packs. (I am not certain. I tried to find a list of features on Blackboard's web site and I couldn't. These are from my notes at a session.)
- The Performance Dashboard is a report of the students showing when they last logged in, and what their grades are.
- The gradebook will differentiate between not done yet and a grade of zero.
- The assessment system has a number of fancy new items, including a "Jeopardy" item where you give the students the answer and they have to provide the question.
- Multi-language support so that a Spanish course can choose to have all the Blackboard provided text, such as the labels on fields, error messages, and Control Panel, in Spanish.
- The return of the "What's New" module so that students can see what has been added to the course site since the last time they visited it.
- Adaptive release in order to control what a student sees based upon criteria that you define. For example, until a student completes a quiz they can't see the next chapter's material. This looks very powerful but complex to set up.
- Export of raw gradebook data so that it can be analyzed in SPSS or some other statistical analysis program.
I would expect us to be able to apply both App Pack 2 and App Pack 3 this summer. There should be almost no down-time involved and no loss of current content or features. I will, of course, give lots of notice.
I met with the Blackboard people about our contract. It runs out in one year. We are trying to sign an extension. We worked on prices and conditions and such.
---SHOWROOM DISPLAYS---
LEARNING OBJECTS makes a Building Block that you can add to the Blackboard system in order to add wiki and blog capabilities for the students. A wiki, in case you don't know, is a quick web site creation system that shares authoring rights to a number of people. So a team within a class could create a web site for a project. When completed the web site could be exported from Blackboard and posted on any normal web server. The blogs are used for journaling, both reflective and recording. Students enter their material in their blogs. Depending on how the teacher sets things up the blogs can be private, open only to the instructor, open to chosen individual, open to everyone, etc. These two tools along with two others in their collection would cost UM around $7,500 per year.
SAFEASSIGNMENT (the company that makes the "original writing" checker that we are currently testing) will be adding a program that helps markup writing submissions from students. This lets you (or other students) use boiler plates and simple tags to indicate where students need to focus and what they need to consider doing. They also are making a collaboration tool so that groups of students will only be able to see and comment on the papers from other people in the same group.
TEGRITY provides a number of systems to capture teaching and make it available on-line. (UM's Professional Development and Training Office at UM has two of their carts that capture video, audio, the computer screen, and a document camera.) Tegrity is currently working on "Simple Mode" system that don't require all the special equipment. I looked closely at their solution to record live lectures since I am looking for a way that teachers can do that on their own. Tegrity's solution requires a $300 digital micro recorder for each participating instructor and would cost more than $90,000 per year in additional licensing fees. This doesn't seem to be the solution I will be recommending.
---PRESENTATIONS---
SINGLE-SIGN ON is being done by a number of institutions in a number of ways. Technically there is no reason that Blackboard shouldn't be able to integrate with the CaneID system at UM. (It will be determined in the future whether Blackboard will be allowed to integrate with CaneID. There is a security concern since Blackboard is off-campus.)
COURSE REDESIGN has been used by a number of institutions to improve learning and reduce costs in courses that support a large number (350 to 14,500) students per semester. See www.center.rpi.edu for more details.
PEER REVIEW of student writing is not well provided for in the Blackboard system. Two faculty members demonstrated how they are accomplishing it. One users groups and the other uses the discussion board. Conclusion: collaboration in Blackboard still needs a lot of work. It can be done, but it isn't easy.
ORIENTATION of new students is being accomplished, or at least enhanced, with Blackboard sites at a number of institutions. There were two different schools who reported their experience with this solution.
BUILDING BLOCKS are now available, for free from other institutions, to help in the evaluation of student progress. One evaluates student participation in a discussion board by showing the instructor how many posts have been made, how many were original and how many were replies, and then displays all of the posts from that student so you can easily determine whether they met your criteria. Another one lets you select students based on criteria, such as getting below 70 on a specific test. once the list is displayed you can send each member of the group an e-mail in one step. I expect to install these soon.
USER GROUPS are one way of getting faculty information about Blackboard, giving them an opportunity to ask questions and get help, and give them a forum for recognition for their successes. One school meets once a month at lunch.
Bill Vilberg
