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BbWorld Blog: Blackboard Corporate Keynote

8:30am: Keynote starts out with a digital leaner/native talking about how she connects and interacts with the world.

Funny explanation of social media and Blackboard in potty language.

The Vision

  • Choice
  • Innovation
  • Access

The Fundamentals
New Services
Mobile Showcase

Vision –

Choice:  Company supports multiple learning systems.  with Multiple service offerings (consulting, student services, Managed Hosting, Online Program Mgmt, Developmental Education, Open Source Services)

Support you no matter what learning tech. you use on campus.

Innovation:

Need to Innovate accross Blackboard Learn, Angel, Moodle, Joule, Edline & Blackboard Engage.

Integrating open education standards into products.

ProjectXP – Tech that works across platforms, being part of 25,000 schools around the world.

8:45: learning object repository (xplor):  search, create and manage content. Can be accessed from anyone of the different learning standards (LTI etc).  [filtering and tagging is built in]

Create Content within Xplor: Pages, Files, Links, Assessments, Assignments, Discussions and External Tools (LTI) also Collections, Channels and Common Cartridge.

Access:

Access to content partnerships by faculty in an easy to use way.

  • McGraw Hill Publisher Integration
  • Pearson (My labs)  My math labs serves 4.5 million students each year
  • Wiley Plus
  • Cengage learning integration
  • Learning.com K-12
  • VitalSource (digital catalog)

The Fundamentals

Support, Openness, Transparency and Quality

Support performance:  7 day resolution 63% 1 Day Resolution 89%

Blackboard Openness: Oscelot, LTI, Common Cartridge, Bb Open Database, SCORM/TIN CAN, LIS, CAS, SHIBBOLETH, Blackboard education Open Source Services, Bb Building Blocks

All time highs in Support Issue Resolution, Change Mgmt, Usability, Quality, Recommend Bb.

Innovation – Excellence in User Experience, Educationally driven feature extension, Evolution of core technology & methods.

Products:  Usability and removal of clicks was key in Bb Learn 9.1.8

Pedagogy First – Assessment Item Analysis – give faculty at a single glance a good sense of how students performed.

Enterprise course evaluation and surveys will be part of course delivery product at no additional charge!

Text & Text-to-Voice Notifications, Two-Way Messaging (from course to phone and phone to course)

One-way text delivery from course part of Course Delivery in Fall!

Collaborate – Improved Integration

Collaborate is Mobile in the Fall! Collaborate can be linked to gradebook and automatically give participation scores based on presence.

Social Learning
Edit your Profile Card, set privacy options, give academic interests.  Blackboard Social will come this Fall! Blackboard Social can be shared outside just the school to the broad network of people that use Blackboard Social.

Program Management
How to go or grow online – big challenge for all institutions.

Blackboard can help with: Program Development, Faculty & Courses, Marketing, Student Lifecycle

Blackboard Mobile!

Mobile Showcase:

  • Mobile Central (Maps: building places on campus)Augmented Reality
  • Mobile Learn – Students can take native tests(tests created for mobile devices) on iPhone, iPad and Android

Usage Information:

  • Average session length 2 minutes
  • Since May 2012 – 11 million sessions of mobile learn
  • 405 years – how much time students have spent on mobile learn
  • Since may 4300 tests were submitted via mobile learn

Push Notifications – app pings you to interact. (new announcment, new content, new course, new grade, new test, test due, test overdue)

Roadmap

Mobile Learn Worldwide: If institution has not subsidized mobile learn, users can make a purchase mobile learn for $1.99 a year or $5.99 unlimited.

Institutional License, Mobile learn will be embedded within mobile central.

 

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BbWorld Blog: Keynote 1 – Freeman Hrabowski

Innovation in Higher Education: Leadership and the Role of Technology

Keynote Subject Matter: Focusing on Freeman’s industry knowledge and leadership as well as the University of Maryland, Baltimore County’s (UMBC) usage of analytics to enable data-driven decision making.

Michael Chasen doing the introductions.

175 Client Receptions
3,500 attendees – most well attended Bb conference ever!

Roadmap will be tomorrow at 8:20am!

real advantages of Blackboard – kids not willing to speak up in class will discuss issue on a discussion board.

Dr. Hrabowski’s student kept realizing more ways Blackboard is helping them as a student.

State of Higher Ed in 2012:
Themes:
Education increasingly being anytime anywhere
Focusing on access and portabilty
Growth and Current outcomes
Focus on Ethics
Increased Globalization
2005 250million students around the world were in Higher ed.
Tech will continue to change our insitutions
Online Education is Growing
social media
Cloud Computing
how we deliver instructions
Unlimited access to knowledge

Role of presidents and boards will be more important than ever in asking the questions and setting the tone.

Our responsibility to use our expertise to have an impact on the way leaders will think about what they can do in supporting the environment and faculty.

How do we go about changing the culture of education? Academic motivation.

How we can use technology to pull students to the work. (usdemocrazy.com)
I came I laughed I learned. Make it fun and interesting.

2/3 of americans don’t have a college degree.  People 35-60 in america are second most educated people in the world. Under 35 is 11th.

35% of white people have degree – 20% of black 15% of Hispanic and 40% Asian – 2/3 of world population don’t have a degree

India is adding 1000 universities, effectively doubling the number of those with college degrees.

Fewer than 25% of first generation college students succeed. We need to change that to make all of us better.

America has a major problem with following behind – every percent increase in GDP adds about 1 million jobs.  We need jobs, we need more educated trained people producing.

It’s not about race, it’s about the opportunity to get an education – Freeman Hrabowski

Science & engineering disproportionately create more jobs than other majors

k-12 needs more math and science support!  They are about Methods and not about the math.

Think about access and success and what we can do as a campus to change the way we do business.  It all begins with attitudes.

Innovation is the name of the game. What happens on my campus that would be defined as innovation.

“Look to the student to the left and to the right and our goal is that all three of you graduate.”

Use Blackboard and technology to empower the student to be more involved.

Small Groups, proactive mentoring examples of strategies to increase successful engagement and empowerment.

Online Learning and Hybrid approaches can lead to even more effective results than only face to face.

Importance of Course Design –

Focus on finding ways to engage the students.  Constant monitoring and continual improvement is important, look past the anecdotes.

 

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BbWorld Blog: ConnectYard and University of Mississippi

BbWorld Blog: Engagement, Persistence and Retention:  How is the University of Southern Mississippi using ConnectYard to Successfully Enhance these Key Factors

Room 277
Tuesday 7/10/2012

Overall Concept: How Student Engagement and Persistence has a positive effect on retention.

Students and faculty choose course by course what channels they want to be communicated through.  (Facebook Twitter, Texting and e-mail)

Faculty doesn’t have to have a Facebook or twitter account to use ConnectYard for the students in their courses.

  • Social Media plays an important part in students’ lives.
  • U of M’s adoption of ConnectYard grew from a desire to improve communication and increase participation in online courses and enhance student learning.
  • Campus email is not an effective tool for student communication.

Hurdles:

– Marketing

– Faculty and Student buy-in

  • Fear that professors will have to access FB pages
  • Faculty concerned with added workload

Social Media Policy (prohibits faculty from using it to teach classes through facebook, but they can use it to supplement.)

Faculty/Student Buy-in

  • Easy to use
  • Building block Integration
  • Bridge to Social Media

Position ConnectYard

  • Integral part to each course
  • Stress privacy protection

Encourage students to personalize notifications

Stress Use to Quantify Class Participation.

Current use of ConnectYard

Getting Everyone Involved

  • Faculty to Student
  • Student to Faculty
  • Student to Student

Communication within Courses

Student Notification

How it works: Messages, Discussions and Announcements come through Channels (Twitter, Facebook, Text & e-mail).  Gradebook updates coming.

Planned uses:

  • Enhance Hybrid courses & supplementals
  • Communication/interaction tool between learning teams
  • Back Channeling during course and web presentations (students communicating with each other during lecture/video etc)
  • Intra-department interaction & communication
  • Campus Notifications
  • Student Services
  • Marketing & Recruitment

Personalize Channels

  • personal perferences
  • protect privacy

One way & Two Way Communication
Bb Integration

  • Discussion Boards
  • Announcments
  • Messages (Blogs, Wikis and Grades coming)

Participation Points
Granular Administration

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‘Twas the Flight Before Blackboard World

An ode to this week’s Blackboard World 2012 Conference in New Orleans:

 

‘Twas the flight before Blackboard World
We arrived at the gate.

Thinking about multi-booked sessions

for which we’ll be late.

Dinner with vendors, beignets at Du Monde,

the Client appreciation party, of which we are fond.

Pre conference workshops to jumpstart our brains

Learning best practices on which we will train.

 

My track is training, f2f and online,

So many sessions, so little time!

T-Bug, Best practice, pedagogy first

Networking with colleagues, you work up a thirst!

Vendor exhibits, giveaways galore,

Or maybe a door prize on which we will score!

 

We will listen, we will talk, we will soak up the knowledge

We will share our experiences with private sector, k-12, or college.

We hope to return come Friday this week,

Loaded with the knowledge we strove to seek.

So I say to you all, let’s learn without fear,

For if we want more, we wait ‘till next year!

 

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My Blackboard World 2012 Session Schedule

So for most of my trips to the big Blackboard Conference I would “seat-of-the-pants” my session scheduling. Essentially this means I wait until I get the guide in my hands and go from there. When I started attending Blackboard Conference’s back in 2000-2001 (Washington DC was my first one) this really wasn’t that big of a deal.  The number of presenters were low and the number of attendees was manageable for my “last-minute” scheduling routine.  This year I decided to use the My Planner app on the Blackboard World Website and plan out my sessions in advance.  Admittedly, I may still change my mind and pick different sessions when July 10th gets here, but this does help me get a head start.  With hundreds of sessions to choose from the planner really helps me put it together.   As the Assistant Director of Training & Development for SHSU Online, it is my responsibility to ensure our faculty feel comfortable in the new environment so you can see from my sessions, exactly that! I’ll try to include a little blurb on why I’m attending each session.

Jacob’s BbW12 sessions: (at least the ones he’s planning on attending today)

Monday July 9

Preconference Workshop:

Content Management Boot Camp
Pre-Conference
Monday, 7/9/2012
9:00 AM – 4:30 PM

This one won’t be rescheduled as it is paid for.  We will be adopting content management and I think that this session will be vitally important for understanding how content Management works. I am really itching to see how it is all put together and how we might help our colleges, departments and programs leverage this tool to ensure that curriculum is aligned, share research, publish student portfolios and more.

Tuesday July 10

Engagement, Persistence and Retention: How is the University of Southern Mississippi using ConnectYard to Successfully Enhance these Key Factors
Tuesday, 7/10/2012
2:05 PM – 3:00 PM
New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center – Room 277

I am interested in seeing how other schools are leveraging the social media connections within the LMS.  Our focus groups on this topic have been mixed in terms of what’s important for the student, so I’d really like to see what they have to offer in practice.

T-BUG (Texas Blackboard User Group)
Tuesday, 7/10/2012
3:10 PM – 4:05 PM
New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center – Room 294

Want to mix it up with my fellow Texas Blackboard users! I’m hopeful that we can break some kind of “attendees from the Lone Star State” record!

Innovation in Higher Education: Leadership and the Role of Technology
Tuesday, 7/10/2012
4:15 PM – 5:30 PM
New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center – New Orleans Theater

Keynote:  Freeman will tell us about Analytics and data driven decision making.  I like to think of it as Neo and the Matrix. This is obviously a topic du jour or was it du semaine or du mois (speak french to me Tish).

Best Practices for Developing an Effective Online Training Course for Faculty: Lessons Learned
Tuesday, 7/10/2012
5:30 PM – 7:30 PM
New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center – Exhibit Hall (Hall J)

Having just done this here for our certification process I’d really like to see what others are doing successfully. We have a large contingent of adjunct faculty who’s everyday jobs and physical location make it difficult for them to attend f2f sessions.

Wednesday July 11

Blackboard Corporate Keynote
Wednesday, 7/11/2012
8:20 AM – 9:35 AM
New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center – New Orleans Theater

I give you the 15 (crash)….10, 10 commandments.  The roadmap for the future.  I always like this session!

100% Online Faculty Training
Wednesday, 7/11/2012
10:20 AM – 10:45 AM
New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center – Room 260

This will be a reoccurring theme for me!  

Rock on, SLATE! An Up Close Look at How a Blackboard User Group has Impacted Teaching, Learning & the Support of Technology in the Midwest
Wednesday, 7/11/2012
10:55 AM – 11:50 AM
New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center – Room 392

I love that they are doing this.  I want to see if any methods can be applied by our local user group and how T-bug might benefit.

Foreign Languages in Blackboard Collaborate
Wednesday, 7/11/2012
12:00 PM – 12:25 PM
New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center – Room 267

Our Foreign languages group are always looking for ways to leverage technology to help them teach online.  I thought that anything I could bring back could be helpful.

Creating Self-Sufficient Online Learners Through the Use of Online Orientations
Wednesday, 7/11/2012
2:55 PM – 3:50 PM
New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center – Room 276

Blackboard has grown to be this really powerful set of tools.  Anyway that I can help our students see through the LMS to the course content is a good thing!

HuMBUG – Without the BAH! – How a Large Metropolitan Area Works Together to Improve the Blackboard Experience for their Students
Wednesday, 7/11/2012
3:50 PM – 4:20 PM
New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center – Digital Content and Upgrade Center

We fall geographically in this region and I’m excited to join-up and see what it is all about.

Pedagogy First, Training and Course Design to Follow at Montclair State University
Wednesday, 7/11/2012
5:15 PM – 5:40 PM
New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center – Room 392

The advice every faculty member wishes their technology people would take to heart! It is not about the medium, it is about the Method!

Thursday July 12

iPad-emonium: A Panel’s Perspective on iPad Initiatives in Higher Education
Thursday, 7/12/2012
10:15 AM – 11:10 AM
New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center – Room 281

What’s an iPad?  LOL This looks like a good session for many different reasons.  Multiple perspectives on a hot topic!

Rethinking Education
Thursday, 7/12/2012
11:20 AM – 12:20 PM
New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center – New Orleans Theater

Sal Khan doing the keynote thing.  This is a must see!

Documentation Tips and Tools, Brought by the World’s Foremost Expert in the Field: YOU!
Thursday, 7/12/2012
1:45 PM – 2:40 PM
New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center – Room 270

As the author of most of our documentation, this session should be great!  Trying to cover every base or eventuality can be a nightmare.

Beyond the Bells and Whistles – Exemplary Courses and Best Practices
Thursday, 7/12/2012
2:50 PM – 3:45 PM
New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center – Room 273

Learning about the Exemplary Course Program rubric can help me equip our professors to present their own exemplary courses!

Turning the Whale: Training for Transformation
Thursday, 7/12/2012
3:45 PM – 4:15 PM
New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center – Digital Content and Upgrade Center

The title on this one alone makes it worth going. I’m really interested in two of their bullet points:
  • Encourage more sophisticated usage of Bb Learn
  • Create space for conversations about teaching and learning

Client Appreciation Party!

Nuff Said!
 
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Why I want to be a VIP BbWorld Blogger

CommunitySo if you’re reading this, you may be asking yourself “Why does this guy want to be a VIP BbWorld Blogger?”  This could be because you honestly want to know, or you just may be reading the title of my Blog post out loud. Regardless of why you are asking yourself that question (or just reading), I’ll tell you in one word… Community.

My name is Jacob Spradlin, I am the Assistant Director of Training and Development for the department that handles Distance Education at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville Texas.  I hold a Master’s in Instructional Technology and have over 15 years experience in the field.  I have worked with Blackboard in one form or another since 2000.   My current job involves online course development as well as training for faculty here at SHSU.

For a long time, (I believe that 1 eLearning year is like 7 regular years) I have been interested in building community on my campus when it comes to eLearning.  I started our first local Blackboard users group back in the early double oughts and learned first-hand how powerful it was to put people together so they can learn from each other.  Getting 2 English faculty in same room or even cross-pollinating the disciplines lead to wonderful discussions and discoveries.

After a while longer in the game I’ve come to the determination that their are four major communities at work in eLearning:

  • Learning Communities
  • Support Communities
  • Social Communities
  • Communities of Practice

Your Learning Community is the obvious choice in that you try to make your course(s) a community of learning.  You might think of it as the “Guide on the Side on Steroids”, where your students with equal parts professor interaction, feedback and prompting; interact with each other, reflect and build upon the knowledge and skills that they are learning.

The Support Community is now almost the gold standard for eLearning, where you use the Tool to support the tool.  Whether it is a Faculty Resource course or a Student Orientation course, you leverage the technology so that they practice using it to find the answers they need.  Our most recent accomplishment at my institution is the beginnings of an Online Certification process where the faculty use the online tools to learn and become certified to teach online.

Social (insert concept here) seems to be the buzzword these days.  It is easy to say I don’t want my course to be like Facebook or Twitter, but is is harder to ask yourself “how are my students communicating?” or “where are they living digitally?”. A Social Community gives your students a sense of home away from home and for online students it creates a connection with the university that helps fight off the “I’m just a lonely student taking courses on the Internet” syndrome.

Communities of Practice have found a home in the eLearning spectrum.  Departments, divisions and other constituencies share professional learning, documentation and knowledge base resources by using this vehicle.  Content Repositories are tremendous assets for these communities.

So, “Is he going to get around to why he wants to be a VIP BbWorld blogger?”  Don’t worry I am, I just wanted to provide some context.

What better community to interact and learn from than the BbWorld community? What better event to foster innovation, creative design and fundamentally shifting the way we communicate than BbWorld 2012? Hundreds of sessions will taking place that will expand our community of support. Thousands of people will attend who will grow our social community.  Ideas, resources and conversations will take place that will add to our community of practice.  This event encompasses exponentially one of the largest learning communities in the world. So instead of asking why I would want to be there, it might be better to ask why I wouldn’t want to be there?!

Not only will i be recording for posterity my observations of a awesome event, I will also be communicating to my eLearning communities and reflecting my experience so that others can take part.

So here i am begging the eLearning gods to, tearing my educational sack cloth, wailing and gnashing my teeth…Please let me be a VIP BbWorld Blogger this year so that I can communicate about the community that I love so much!

Sincerely,

Jacob Spradlin

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