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BbWorld Blog: Beyond the Bells and Whistles – Exemplary Courses and Best Practices

7/12/2012 2:50pm | Room 273

Subject: Focus on importance of pedagogical best practices.  Discuss design and teaching principles behind the ECP rubric; the impact of exemplary courses on the student experience; and how the ECP and its rubric can be used for individual course improvement, faculty training and professional development.

Exemplary Course Program – http://www.blackboard.com/catalyst

What is it? – core of program is a rubric:

Course design

  • Goals and Objectives
  • Student Engagement
  • Content, Org and Clarity

Interaction and Collaboration

  • Learning and COurse Grade
  • Vareity of tools

Assessment

  • Alignment w/ objectives
  • Formative and SUmmative

Learner Support

  • Orientation and training
  • Technical and Pedagogical

Design Standards:

  • Sound Instructional Design
  • Quality Matters Rubric

Practices Exemplary

  • Extensive interaction
  • use of of multimedia
  • Mastery based exercies

Interaction

Faculty Information – includes picture weekly office hours through blackboard IM, Expectations
Discussion Boards – Each week different discussion board faculty must seed each discussion (first reply) Weekly graded assignment
Live Classroom – Every class has live classroom link (trainings offered to faculty)  Faculty who Commit to doing 3 live sessions they are offered a stipend
Feedback & Grades – Consistent, responsive feedback.  Rubrics for every assignment.

Media
Module Content (videos & podcasts) and accessibility.  Every piece of audio and video content has transcript.

Mastery Based Exercises

Check your Understanding Exercises – use Adapative release
Mastery exercises – for a grade 10 questions, take it unlimited and no due date.

Advanced Photoshop

Course Design
Projects & Interactive Rubrics.  project base course design.  The way each week is laid out is identical.

Assessments and Rubrics – Can be accessed in several different locations (Course information, and Gradebook)

Leave feedback when you score in your Interactive Rubrics!

Introductions to Computers –

Course is active, collaborative and authentic – design principle.

Dashboard Announcements – Frequently used features. Schedule your announcements to release ahead of time.

Label everything as Required, Recommended and Optional. Allows more content in front of the students without it overwhelming them.

Task List – Use the Date management screen to set dates of when things open close and when they are required.

Automated Notification from Agents console of the Early Warning System.  Entire course is Project Driven.

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BbWorld Blog: Wikis, Blogs, Forums, Journals- Which One Do I Use & Why?

7/12/2012 | Room 276

Deborah Prickett
English Instructor
Jacksonville State University

Rewrote mission statement to be a “learning centered” university.   Doing a lot of challenge based learning in the English Department.  Offering many hybrid courses.

Forums:

  • Prompts or not
  • Replies when required
  • Checking for posts that respond
  • Students – not continuous Engagement
  • Grading Fast and easy

Discussion forum keeps track of all comments(replies) in Gradebook.  Blackboard Blogs & Wikis do not.

Blogs:

Individual Blackboard Blogs are better Chunked.  Put them together so that they are easier to grade.  This professor created an individual blog for every chapter.  Great for multimedia input (videos, pictures, charts etc).  Great for older students.

Students are used to looking at blogs.  Blogs are more visual.  Forums have Tree Structure.

*Tip:  Have your students decide how the assignment will be graded: A student created Rubric!

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Bb World Blog: Rubrics – Why and How to Best Use Rubrics in Blackboard

7/12/2012 | 8:30am

Subject: Learn the benefits of using Blackboard Learn’s interactive Rubrics.  This presentation will also include how-to instructions and some best practices.

Objectives

  • Define academic rubric
  • pros and cons
  • learn how to use
  • best practices and pitfalls

We are using clickers to see where we wall stand on grading and rubrics.  Great concept!

Rubric
Any established mode of conduct or procedure; protocol.

Academic Rubric
Explicit set of criteria that’s used for assessing students’ work.

Pros of a Rubric

  • promotes consistent, accurate and fair descriptive assessment
  • Promotes self-reflection and self-assessment in students (leads to higher quality work)
  • Enables comparison of works across settings (use criteria in several assignments throughout the year to help assess progress in how they are doing to achieve goals)
  • Rubrics reduce need for clarification. (Time Savers)
  • Promotes Formative Assessment

What does a rubric look like?
Holistic Rubric – applies to the whole of the assignment. Not broken down by criteria.

General Rubric – Contains criteria that are general across all tasks.  Clarity of Description 35% Opinions %35 References %10 Structure/Gammer %25

Analytic Rubric – Breaks assignment down by criteria along several dimensions.  Puts it into specific things you want the student to do.

Cons of a Rubric

  • Too specific, too detail oriented (easy for this to happen)
  • Not appropriate for all situations (algebra for example – calculate correctly or not)
  • Time Consuming
  • Do not capture complexity and creativity of some works

Steps to create Rubric

  • Dtermine learning outcomes
  • keep it short 4-15 items
  • each rubric should focus on a different skill
  • Focus on how students express learning
  • Evaluate only measurable criteria
  • reevaluate the rubric

Building Rubrics:

  • Ctrl Panel > Course Tools > Rubrics > Create Rubric
  • Supply Name and Description
  • Complete Rubric details (columns are levels of achievement and rows are criteria)

Rubrics can be exported and imported through Blackboard.

Adding Rubric to Assignment:

  • Go to assignment > Edit
  • Section 3 – Add Rubric (select rubric, create new rubric, create from existing)
  • Select the Rubric(s) you created and want to use
  • Set points from Rubric to points from assignment (only works for Points based rubrics)
  • Click OK
  • You can then delete, view and edit rubric as well as change type (grading, secondary eval), show rubric to students (make sure to say “yes with rubric scores”)

Grading with rubric

  • Grade Center
  • Go to assignment
  • find student Grade attempt
  • Click View Rubric Button
  • Check the appropriate check box for what the student accomplished in terms of levels and criteria
  • You can give feedback on specific criteria
  • Points are automatically totaled

Get the impersonate student building block from Oscelot.

Student – goes to My Grades > View Rubric

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BbWorld Blog: Pedagogy First Course Design to Follow

July 11, 2012 | Room 392

Subject:  In order to ensure that our students receive a high quality online education, Montclair State University has transformed its approach to faculty training and development.  By restructuring the format of our training workshops, from technology to pedagogy focused, we have seen an increase in the quality of instruction and comfort with this new online learning environment.  We have implemented a pedagogically focused online course template, with an emphasis on active learning.  These innovations have led to an increase in online/hybrid course offerings and improved student outcomes.

Montclair State has 6 colleges/schools and 18,000 students (graduate and undergraduate).

Pedagogically focused online course template –
Benefits and challenges of online learning and teaching are important to think about.

What do students expect?  Quality, Clarity, responsiveness and frequent timely feedback.

Online – Flexible time and space, front loaded design process, instructions must be explicit, guide on side, technology must be leveraged to facilitate interaction, frequent instructor feedback.

Work is grounded in Quality Matters:

Course design model (subject/content driven model).  Holistic approach to each learning unit: Orientation, Content, Interaction and Assessment.

administrative information is separated from learning units.

Old approach –
Intro
Advanced

New approach –
Building a student friendly online course
Facilitating online interaction
Designing Assessments Online
Transforming a face to face course to an online/hybrid
Assessing Learning through scoring rurbrics.

This leads to radically changing how you position your material.  Focus on collaboration, communication, assessment and interaction.

They run a summer institute (3 days). Focus on delivering content, collaboration, assessment and communication.  See real examples of coursework from peers.

Services listed of what instructional designer can do?  Where do they go for information, how do they get design help.

Students
Guide to becoming a successful online learner.  (Is online learning right for me?)

Spotlight the faculty (ask them to e-mail in what they think is cool).  Once a week goes out in the blurb.  (leverage connect here also maybe a text message).

 

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BbWorld Blog: HuMBUG without the Bah!

7/11/2012 3:50pm | Digital Content and Upgrade Center

Subject: How are large metropolitan area works together to Improve the Blackboard Experience for their Students.

John Lane – Univ of Houston Downtown

Joan Talbot – Houston Baptist University

Paul Lee from Lee College

Martha S from San Jacinto College

  • Generated list of all universities and community colleges and called & e-mailed
  • Started Listsserv using Google Groups
  • Started website after first Meeting (hosted by St. Thomas)
  • Quarterly meeitngs at different sites since.

Brainstorming sessions at meetings
Recruit new Members
Vendor Invitations for show and tells
Breakout sessions for server administration and GUI administration when possible
Discussions about what we’re doing and or current problems. Just Sharing
Lunch!
humbugonline.org

Be Open
Everyone’s opinion counts
Helpful
– if you have experienced something, share so no repeat mistakes or re-inventing the wheelReady to Share
Vendor Representations to offer insights and information

Less time figuring out things on your own.
less frustration – you have friends to call
Less Money
– Hours Spent
– Training with the Eperts
New Connections
– New Resources
– Collective Thinking
– Unlimited possibilities

Network, Seek out Bb Administrators in your geographical area!

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BbWorld Blog: New Ways of Communicating at Xavier University

7/11/12 1:50pm

Subject:  Implementation and uses of Connect to communicate on campus.

Moving from just using connect for emergency communication to using it for alumni, financial aid, student activities etc.

Test messages to cell phones, PDAs networked digital signage, and other text based devices and messages to e-mail accounts.  Personalized voice messages to land line and cell phone.

Issue:

Only issue was collecting required data (cell phone number).  Had students fill out survey with cell phone and alternate e-mail address.

Bursar’s office use:
Registration – Notify students to pay for classes before they are dropped.

Refund Checks -Notify students receiving refunds.

Bills – Notify students via text and e-mail on bills.

Financial Aid office Use:

Acceptance – Notify students to accept financial aid awards
Verification forms – Notify students to complete before aid is awarded
Attendance: Attend all classes before aid is posted.

Faculty Use: Faculty schedules, attendance codes

Department Use: Notify students on meetings and seminars.

Scholarship Use: Notify students when scholarships are available.

Newsletter Use: Alumni newsletter

Social event Use: Notify alumni in certain areas of regional events.

Fundraising use: remind pledger about pledge and due date

Create a data file (.csv or .txt) of the constituents you want to communicate with and send the message just to them!

You can get information (data) about all of your communication (sent, people reached, bad numbers and successful deliveries)

Generate reports can be generated from the data.

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BbWorld Blog: 100% Online Faculty Training – Will They Come

Gallaudet University – Chartered by Abraham Lincoln

7/11/2012 10:20am

Initially started with face-2-face training and noticed a decline in enrollment.

92% of their faculty use Blackboard

eCurriculum – a term to use for Blackboard Training

Fixed Dates 2 weeks long.

Watch recorded webinar

5 modules, use adaptive release.

Use collaborate when needed to demo and view instructor.

Now it is self-paced, and self enroll.

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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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