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We are presenting an all-morning upgrade workshop on June 1, and you can call 973.720.2659 to register for that or to make an appointment with an instructional technologist for a one-on-one workshop.

We’ll also be having our usual late August workshop for people new to Bb — stay tuned for announcements!

http://www.youtube.com/BlackboardTV

The site features videos appropriate to students and faculty alike, made by Bb users from all over the world. Learn about the new gradebook, see what’s coming in Blackboard 9, and more!

The direct link is: http://euphrates.wpunj.edu/bb/.

If you need an observer in your course for peer review please follow the procedure outlined above. Ditto if you’d like a guest lecturer in your Bb course.

But if your guest lecturer comes from outside the WPUNJ community please give us a one week head start, as we need to load the individual into the university system, into Bb, and then load them into your course shell.

Questions about adding extra faculty to your course? Please use the Bb Support Center or write Blackboard administrator Robert Harris at harrisr@wpunj.edu.

Other advantages to logging in to Bb Home include access to the wealth of help documentation stored on that page. Visit Bb Home now and see for yourself!

On the top page of your blackboard site click the pencil tip                V

on the ensuing interface check the Display Course Name box to keep the course visible on your site, and uncheck the box to leave it invisible:

Making a site invisible does not delete it from your account.

For more detailed instructions please go to the Get Started link under Faculty Support at Bb Home, http://bb.wpunj.edu, and scroll to the bottom for instructions.

Stay tuned for more great tips!

Robert

Issues currently covered include

• Assessments
• Browsers
• Digital Drop Box Filenames
• Word 2007

This will comprise an introduction to v9, dubbed Next Generation (and always referred to as NG).

A recurring theme throughout the talk was a spoof on the MS/Mac commercials where a  button down guy plays Microsoft and a with-it dude plays Macintosh.  In this case the button–down dude is Blackboard v.4-8 and the with-it dude is v.9   They kind of flop because the original commercials cream Microsoft, but it’s not in Blackboard’s interest to sneer at the version of the product everyone in the room is using.

Chason announces that Bb World has drawn 2,200 users from 28 countries

Right now there are three levels of Bb entanglement involvement:

1. Bb Learn – the LMS
2. Bb Transact – performs e-commerce and transactions
3. Bb Connect – campus-wide alert.  Later Vlad points out to me that Bb owns the company that we’ve contracted with for campus alert, so whether we know it or not we are working with Bb on that end.

Every time I hear the Bb big-wigs talk they apologize for the quality of support and announce a re-organization that will resolve the issue once and for all.  Having heard this for years now there is much twittering (and some grumbling) from the assembled masses.  Anyway they’ve outsource Tier one calls and are concentrating on Tier 2.  Productivity is up 23% — 23% of what?, I ask.  It’s a silly number to quote.  And what does “productivity” mean?, that they are closing calls or that they are resolving client issues?  And by what magic 8-ball are we gauging the success rate of Tier 1 calls?  I swear, this guy needs a good editor.

Suggests a community engagement tool by which users could log on and be marched with similar schools.  One could compare strategies, do a little dance, etc.

OK, on to the Brave New Frontier of NG

This is the ultimate merging of Bb and WebCT, and will be a multi-year, multi-release effort.  Version 8 will be the last of the old school, while v.9 will be the first of the NG releases.  V.10 will be the mature NG release.  Right, and I wouldn’t install v.9 just out of the gate.

The example he displays uses all three modules:  Learn, Transact and Connect.  In many ways it really is a portal solution.

If a given campus uses more than one LMS (Berkeley, Rutgers, etc.)  NG will aggregate courses from each of them.  So this is how they are going to compete with Sakai, Moodle and the bunch: they are going to act as an umbrella tool for the competition.

Instructors can get updates on student attendance, grades, etc. on Bb or via the phone, SMS, etc.

Modules can be moved about the page as they have been on Google for years now.  He’s pretty stoked about this one.  Faculty, he suggests, will have a great deal more leeway in designing their courses.  Actually I think they have a lot now but don’t use it because it’s not fall-out-of-bed easy, whereas this looks as though it will be.

There will be rubrics function, but it doesn’t seem to be loaded with any examples.  It’s just an area where one can write rubrics.  Waypoint users won’t have much use for this, I don’t think.  Still, it’s less complicated than Waypoint, so while the COE may use the latter more informal users might take advantage of what Bb offers.

Groups look like they are more logical, and students should have less difficulty than they do now with the threaded nightmare.

Instructors can go to one site and manage multiple gradebooks from there.  That got a round of applause from the audience.  Chason wondered why his module thing didn’t get that level of excitement, and someone calls out “because it’s not innovative any longer.”  And that line got applause.

v.9 will ship with 15 languages, many of them European.  I wonder if he is counting English . . .

The portfolio tool is improved because instructors can see the rubrics as well as the materials from across their courses.  This really looks like the webpage interface Terry has been on about re: portfolio, so it might make him happy.

He shows off the Scholar (bookmarking) and plagiarism tools, but they seem pathetic shadows of good products already out there (del.icio.us and turnitin.com).

He talks shortly about the Sync tool, which I’ve discussed earlier.  In initial iteration will synchronize Bb and Facebook, but iPhone, myYahoo, and iGoogle are on their way – but not imminently. Maybe not until 2012.

For more information see:

Interactive Guided Tour of Project NG

Addressing diverse needs through online orientation experiences

Weds. 8:30

See Handout.  They’re from Excelsior College, formerly Regents College in Albany NY.  They were an entity of the state but no longer.  They have 33,000 students but no buildings, classes, faculty offices.  The whole deal is at a distance.  They are one of the top educators of nurses, and their second large population is the military.  They use Vista but this talk has nothing to do with the platform.

They have over 250 online courses per year.  I don’t understand how 33,000 students fit into 250 courses . . .

Vista Orientation for Instructors

Vista Orientation for Students

Of course they need to do all their training online, as they do everything online.

Their challenges include a broad array of student skills, departments, and remote equipment.  This can be difficult for, say, the military.  And many of their students are non-traditional.  Finally, they start new “semesters” every month, so they have rolling enrollment and the training must be up all the time.

INSTRUCTORS

They address departmental differences with icons – each department has different needs, so there are separate orientations for each department.  Users just select the correct icon to get the correct department.

To address the varied technical skills issue they created a number of video demonstrations.

They address information overload by eliminating overlap between the two different orientations. I don’t see how this helps either the students or the faculty.

Because instructors are always coming in they get immediate access to VOI.  And no, I don’t understand how this strategy corresponds with the one above.

STUDENTS

The students also face many of the challenges faced by the instructors.

Of course the distance training is conducted on Bb.

They use a modular approach so students can go straight to the area in which they need help.

With a broad population of students they have tech skills modules to fit the widely ranging needs of the students.

Online course help button leads to a general help page.

*They have a Known Issues link – very important, say, for the problem with special characters in filenames, or using Word 2007.

After the initial version was out they went to both students and instructors and asked what they were having trouble with and made a second version.  This was after a few months, and then a year out they did the same thing and created a third version.

This is a real course with tests and the like – it’s not a Sandbox, it’s an Orientation Course.  This is another good idea that we might want to think of.

BE:

Visual: They find the video orientation was very useful.

Dynamic: Talk to students and instructors on a regular basis and see what are the problems that most need addressing.

Convenient:  you want the orientation to be as broadly available – and linked from everywhere.

Concise and Complete:  Both policies and practice activities.

Website = http://www.excelsior.edu

Write them and they will give you some kind of test access:

lala@excelsior.edu — Andrea Lala

eodriscoll@excelsior.edu — Erin Driscoll

Patricia Dinneen – Inst. Designer

First let me suggest that this is the last session on the last day and there was nothing else available.

The speaker works at George Washington University in DC. They have lecture-based classes with sections. In addition to the instructor there is a grader in a class with about 120 students.

Faculties are from good schools and are accustomed to critical thinking.

Assertion: Online forums can provide most section benefits with attention to:

• Organization of the posting
• Good questions
• Grading

• Participation
• Quality assessment

• Feedback (teacher presence)
• Balancing structure with flexibility

What is the value of having sections in a large lecture course? I wondered, because her description of the course didn’t allow for sections. So she got all these suggestions about what sections were good for, then I asked who was teaching the sections – she answered there are no sections. Then went on talking about sections.

Huh? And that was the murmur in the crowd. Why is she on about sections when the courses she is talking about don’t have sections? People are walking out.

Then she offers a list of the great things about distance learning. Been there, done that.

Case #1:
So they had six students per group, 20 groups (120 students). Oh, and one professor to monitor them all, one professor to mind them, one professor to bring them all in the darkness bind them. And surprise, it didn’t work. At the end of the semester she implemented an informal survey of how the course went, and only a quarter of the students responded. Yet even with this paltry population the presenter goes into the data.

Somewhere in this presentation she suggests that this is one of the most expensive schools in the nation. Maaaan, if I had a kid it wouldn’t be going to this school . . .

Case #2

•  Groups of 15, short, guided questions.
•  9 forums, 3 to clarify text, 6 are policy oriented
•  The grader read the discussions and the professor “spot checked.”
•  Participation is 25% of the grade. Grading is check, check plus.

After some time he adapted his approach:
• Post before class
• Quotes can’t be repeated (between students)
• Made posting directions more vague (I’m really not kidding here) to make students “less rule-bound.” Rules like, say, quotes can’t be repeated between students . . .

Results of case #2:

• Students complained in both questions
• Responses were more in depth and more creative, perhaps because the questions were more vague.
• Good participation
• Faculty member got good feedback from the professor

Soo –
Can online forums replace sections? Remember, they don’t want sections in order to save money. This in one of the most expensive schools in the nation — she concludes YES THEY CAN!!!!

Key factors:
Organize postings

• Fit the number to the time period.
• Limit weekend deadlines
• Require references creatively
• Encourage threading

Grading

• Give participation enough weight
• Consider some flexibility in assessing individual responses
• With limited instructor participation grading becomes a source of feedback

Feedback

• Teacher presence is important, but less so than in online learning
• Students need to see the relevance to lectures and readings

Balance Structure with flexibility

The browser locks students out of browsing, copy-and-paste.  Full screen, so it can’t be minimized.  Students can’t open up any other file on their computer.  The right-click is locked down, and the control and function tools don’t work.  Screen copy is turned off.

This would work in a lab, but not when the student is at home and can get help from a friend or have another computer open.  If SRs answer is “well, at least it works in a proctored environment,” then why not save the money and just proctor the exam?!!

Instructors use remote exams because it is easier, and it isn’t distance learning if students have to come to campus for assessments!

What if students lose their Internet?  The proctor can re-set the test with a password, or one can do a hard re-boot.

For the administrator there are control panel settings that allow customization of the system.

Honestly there are problems enough with the Bb assessment tool as it is; this product seems to me to add a layer – or more — of problems.  You think we get complaints now?  Ha.

There is a free two-month pilot.  Their website has movies and such to demonstrate the product.

Audience member asks if this will change settings on the home computer?  SR suggests that it is non-invasive. All those settings will be restored when the test is over.  Even hard-boots sometimes require bringing Lockdown back up and immediately closing it in order to re-set the settings.  Yeah – you try and explain that to all the students. Again, more problems, but now instead of just problems with the test students are going to complain that we mucked up their computers.  There might even be a liability issue.

Audience member brings up the obvious question:  how does this work when the student is at home?  SR suggests it’s best in a proctored environment.  Jiminy.  See my point above.

The other obvious point – how can the proctor password be given to the student if power goes out at home?  SR says:  send the student the password, and then change that password.  Yeah.

With all these devastating questions he cuts out the Q&A and moves on to the StudyMate Class server.  This is a very hard sell – at least half the people here were present for the StudyMate session.

Will start with a live demonstration.

“Ultimate study group,” that will allow students and faculty to create and share flash projects. Engaging and fun, he promises.

Works in the “Classic” environment. Students will see View and Edit tabs. User goes to Flash cards and can create questions and answers. And there is a Hangman option. The Challenge game is a Jeopardy! rip-off.

He suggests that creating questions/answers is both fun and educational. Sounds kind of childish really, but I’m sure Molly would use it in her classes. COE people can use it to demonstrate techniques to our Teachers of the Future!

Collaboration settings allow groups of students, the entire class, or the instructor to edit each project.

Advanced instructor options allow users to export items to the Bb grade pool, or to create downloadable XML versions.

StudyMate items can be added to classes in the same way that assignment manager can – by using the drop-down menu on the right hand toolbar of the Assignments (or whatever) tab.

Some volunteers are going to log on and create some items. I see a problem already in that the volunteers need Internet connections, and to my understanding no one does. The Bb_World tool hasn’t worked all day. As I guessed, instead of people logging on and creating the items the are calling out answers and he is entering them (which rather eludes the point of having people really get in and try it). It also drags out the process. Yaawn.

See the Respondus Website for all sorts of documentation, even some hands-on.

Also a free Beta is available – I think it works through December of this year. Even if you don’t buy the license you’ll be able to keep the lite version of the product.

Someone asked about equations, and Shea said they are looking into it, but don’t know yet.

They’ve done no studies on the subject, but they have anecdotal data. And that data is that students loved it. Loved it. Did it help them learn? We can only guess, though one audience member suggested that there have been studies indicating that games-based learning has been very effective.

Short demo – was to have lasted 50 minutes but only went for 30.

University of North FL – Jackonsonville. 16,000 students, 500+ faculty.
1200 instructors on Bb, 1900+ active users

They create Bb templates that can be used across multiple courses. Any Bb course can be used as a template for another.

They have a Bb orientation course (not unlike the last session) and uses a template for that, also for the various workshops they teach. This would be a good idea for us: create Captivate presentations for each of our most commonly offered faculty workshops. She has intro to teaching online, intro to hybrid teaching, blogs and wikis, etc.

She propagates templates via Copy Course. Can also use course creation wizard.

Three steps:

1. Create content: Do it outside of Bb using Dreamweaver, etc. Save all associated files in a single folder.
   • Links should be relative unless you are linking to Bb content. In that case you can open the content in a different window and use copy-paste.
2. Zip package
3. Add item and unload.

Hint: create link roll in del.icio.us in order to maintain links for different sites.

So in essence this has nothing to do with making over a page, but with propagating pages across the site. A disappointing session because we already do this kind of thing. The del.icio.us point was interesting, but a whole session for one good tip seems like a lot . . .

Course banners: She created a course banners page that people can draw from, as some faculty didn’t use them, and others aren’t very good. She took some pix of her own and cut them. She also created some University-specific banners. Maybe we can create college- and/or department-specific banners. OK, two good ideas.Try either 450×90 or 500×100 pixels.
Course evaluations:Not valid for us because of our evaluation process.

Uses an RSS feed for her help pages.

They have a calendar of maintenance, so they can tell faculty when Bb will be down. Might be hard for us because we can’t predict when IS is going to get around to an upgrade

We really need to overhaul the support areas.

http://www.unf.edu/tildeesoles/Bb_makeover.html

Templates:
http://www.unf.edu/~esoles/course_template.pdf
Module development
http://www.unf.edu/~esoles/HTML_development.pdf