At the School of Nursing and Health Studies (SONHS) we use Blackboard extensively for all courses. Our faculty so far have had no issues with the transfer to the latest upgrade and have really embraced the new features such as setting your own theme. One amazing new feature is the ability to neutralize a question in a quiz once it has been deployed. This saves a lot of time as we give multiple quizzes through Blackboard each week. From my perspective the whole look and feel of the software has improved greatly.
Another tool we use extensively in BB is the WIKI feature which actively promotes collaborative learning. Our students have produced some excellent examples of WIKIs and faculty enjoyed breaking away from the PowerPoint trap. Students have enjoyed the ability to collaborate easily and faculty have noted that they were able to see the process and evolution of student work and participation.
The SONHS runs an "online" certificate for Nurse Educators. The program is a series of four courses designed to be delivered totally online. All courses use most features of BB including WIKIS, BLOGS, JOURNALS. We embed video and include other multimedia features and learning objects. We also use BB's Collaborate video conferencing tool to hold weekly seminars where the whole lesson is delivered "live" online. One of the courses, NUR551 won a national award for exemplary design. This was a great honor as only a few courses from various universities are chosen each year. Additionally the faculty member teaching that course won the Sloan award for exemplary online teaching. There is only one winner each year.
Here at the SONHS we use BB extensively for all our programs and orientations. For example we have Pre-Immersion Orientations that are given to our students totally online before they arrive on campus to prepare them for our fast pace traditional courses. All this is done in BB and when the students arrive on campus they are already familiar with the BB software and have also made a connection with us. We have online orientations for our Masters and Doctor of Nursing Practice programs and we make extensive use of the ORGANIZATION feature within BB. We have organizations that serve as resource centers for all our programs and more…
If you have read down this far you are probably thinking WOW! Someone asked if anyone uses all the features and I can answer yes we do! When we see something that does not make sense or a feature that is not working we either call over to our wonderful BB team at UM or sometimes send a suggestion to BB who do listen to ideas from their customers.
Here are some questions you may wish to ponder:
How do you do all of that?
How come your faculty are not experiencing the same issues?
Is it BB's fault?
Is the upgrade to a really sophisticated piece of software that bad?
No matter what your views on teaching and learning, the whole experience is changing and academic technology is here to stay. Students entering grade schools could not imagine a time without the Internet and being five steps away from a computer that is online. Everyone is connected through computers, smart phones and other devices…
My suggestion would be to look around your school and determine if you have the support needed to maximize the technology you have available. With a good support team you probably would be much further ahead with your use of academic technology and would be utilizing the services and equipment we have available at UM. We have some incredible academic technology resources at UM and nothing much is going to happen unless you have support to use it. If someone suddenly put a bassoon in your office would you be likely to have mastered it by the end of the month with no instruction? The SONHS decided to put a support structure in place and students and faculty have reaped the rewards.
