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BbWorld16 Session Blog – Student Success in Higher Education: Plan, Predict, Engage

Venetian G
July 13, 2016 4:35 – 5:25

Only 59% graduate from college after 4-6

12.5 Million 20-somethings with some college credits and no degree

Understanding students’ struggles through research – what we learned:

  • Student journey is messy
  • Students feel alone and anxious
  • feel urgency to make decisions
  • lack of connections between short and long-term goals

The average advisor to student ratio – 1:300

Student success is a complex problem, but there are clear ways Blackboard can help.

Our student success philosophy

  • Plan
  • Predict
  • Engage

Blackboard Plan -empowering students to take control of educational journey (exploration, planning, registration) Partnership with Burning Glass

  • Discover careers based on interests (in development) Bb Plan
    Students can self-identify interests and seek careers that align with those interests
  • Explore career and skill demand (is there demand for that profession and if so, where is it?)
  • Learn about jobs first hand – partnership with road-trip nation (video interviews of people in professions) giving students first hand accounts of working in desired profession.  See real job postings that exist today
  • Seek Help from Advisors – making help accessible to students
  • View Degree Progress
  • Conduct “what if” analysis (what if I wanted to that program instead?)
  • Planning a course schedule
  • Register for courses

Blackboard Predict – Humans helping students (enabling those people to do a better job at helping students) Importance of Data, What they are doing with Data

  • Predict takes in 2 data sources SIS (demographic data) and LMS (course activity)
  • Taking that data and predicting (probability that student will pass etc..) which then points to who should I reach out to and who would benefit most from the interaction? for advisor.
  • Knowing more about students, passing the data on through a display that gives advisor more information about you (helps advisor engage with student to build relationship)

Blackboard Engage – The business of being a student needs to be easier (personalized, relevant and focused on student success)

  • Building toward a streaming pathway
  • supporting entire student lifecycle from inquiry to enrollment to student support: Global advisor and coach community, lead nuturing and enrollment mgmt, student support services, and more…
  • Communications need to be customized to where that student is in their lifecycle and who they are.

Improve advising with Blackboard Advise – a web-based advising tool that provides insight into students plans.

  • enable advisors to guide students to success (quickly understand who is on track and who is at-risk
  • Provide proactive guidance and support critical milestones
  • 24/7/365 contact centers (financial aid/enrollment mgmt/registration/advising)

 

BbWorld16 Session Blog – Fueling success: leaner-focused strategies

July 13, 2016 8:30 – 10:15am
Venetian E & F

Rapid panel with AWS and IBM talking about to hosting partnership:
Peter George SVO Product Development and Support Cloud Services
Mark Ryland Chief Solutions Architect, Amazon Web Services
Brenda Harvey General Manager Global Tech Services IBM

What does partnership mean and who does it affect?
2 major goals. Continue to improve service by bringing in experts and raise our game.  Picking premier cloud platform.  It means nothing will change immediately.  Partners coming into help us operate what we have today.  Overtime leveraging more and more of the amazon cloud.

Security & Privacy – How partnership enhances this?
Security is highest priority with Amazon.  It is safe, is it secure?  Yes. Enhance security posture by using high scale, automation and built in capabilities.  Ratio between security engineers and servers under mgmt is good. Operate under wide range of compliance regimes…Continuous 3rd party auditing (credit card industry, federal government) Good customer track record.

With IBM security, privacy and data compliance are the highest priority.  IBM brings security solutions and expertise.

What does Transition look like?

Transition has started and is well underway.  Datacenter consolidation and process operations is underway.  Phase 1 is IBM is operating what we have currently.  Phase 2 – SaaS applications move into amazon cloud.


Student Success: Knowing your Learner (Panel)

Dr. Darcy Hardy – Assoc. Vice President Blackboard
Dr. Michael Moore – VP of Academic Affairs University of Arkansas system
Col. Steven Delvaux – Vice Provost for Academic Affairs Army University
Julie Young – CEO Global Personalized Academics Founder of Florida Virtual School

What did we used to do before we got here?
(Moore: eVersity – adult leaner centric building university from ground up.)
Talk to your students (old school 😉
Delvaux: Army – ASVAB  (how army used to do it) also battery of medical tests.
Young: current – Global Personalized learning – how we used to do it: Dial-up..Data on a spreadsheet and best friend was a telephone.  Knowing leaner’s voice/parents. All about the relationships.

How do you use data now/plan to use data to know your learners?

Young – Lots of data – data can be noise (data literacy-how do you use it) use for Teacher evaluation/teacher support – to see how students are doing.
Moore – Leveraging data appropriately so as not to encouraging “opt out” by students.
Dalvaux: Focus on cognitive data to see if courses are contributing to competency skills etc. Have to be better and more efficient.  Using data to be individualized, adapted and accelerated in training.

How can we use data as we develop programs for students in a disadvantaged situation? (lower socio-economics)

Yes – identify students early on and catch them before they slip through the cracks.  Looking at admission data (ability to pay etc). Data can also level the playing field so that education is not determined on your zip code. Virtual Education.

 What innovations are you seeing around the use of data?

Getting data from where students stop focusing so that we can determine how to better engage. Transformation Learning (using gaming principles) tapping into analytics of when folks dropout.  You can predict success of students before class starts (1st week/zero week strategies) Helping identify if certain objects are supporting learning outcomes of course.  learning pathways – how do we need to present knowledge to encourage success.  Does that vary from student to student.   How do your blackboard login activities compare to your classmates?

What do we know about learners based on data?

Kids will reinvent themselves online (flourish).  Kids have the capability to do more than we give them credit for given the right engagement.  They will go much deeper online if they are engaged.  If we create models that give learners the opportunity to bring what they do outside of school into the classroom and give them credit for that it makes school more relevant.

If you unleash and empower the learners, then the sky is the limit.  Don’t limit your students.

Data has confirmed that time on task matters and that early intervention matters.  Helps in combatting faculty assumptions about student/adult leaners. Some students just want to get through…the a is not the goal.

How do you merge necessity of extracurricular experience with the competency sought in the classroom?  how do you blend it?

Venn diagram (training/education/experience). Importance of career competencies.  Diversity training, team leader.

How do you change the culture of faculty and instructors to accept the use of data in their courses to improve student success?

Training/Development – show them the value of the data and how it can help them. Answer depends on institution.  How can the learning in classroom be improved?


 

BbWorld15: Blackboard Collaborate Road Map – Session Blog

Speakers:

David Hastie Sr. Dir. Product Management
Carl Marrelli Sr. Product Manager


**Some these are forward thinking statement and may or may not end up being in the final product.

Collaborate Ultra has been out for a couple of months and the initial feedback has been super positive!

3 objectives in Collaborate redesign:

  • Simple – easy entry into sessions, browser based, sleek intuitive interface
  • Modern – Cutting edge media technology, accessible, Mobile
  • Focused – Designed for education, varied instructional strategies/methods, Deeply integrated with the LMS

Highest level of quality and innovation – enhancements andmaintenance more quickly released with zero downtime

Key Benefits

  • HD Video & Audio Puts you right in the Center
  • A world class user experience to encourage use
  • Supporting Asynchronous learning models, native mp4 recording and playback
  • Web-Based – get started immediately no need for java or downloading launchers.

Available no in all regions and in 26 languages.  Application is responsive adjusts based upon the format of device that you are viewing it on! Also adaptive based on type of content.

Current use Cases:

  • office hours
  • group collaboration
  • teaching & learning

Learn 9.1 – If you use you can use new Collaborate Ultra with B2. New Collaborate B2 Supports session in old and new collaborate experience. Allows for piloting while still using old system.

Chat panels pop out when in use!

Sharing file interface is simple and easy to add and annotate! Several annotation tools with several colors.  Either on top of images or files like powerpoint, pdf, jpg.  Sharing Browser instances as well.  Things you share are easily identifiable.

Records whatever is being actively shared + Audio. Conference members can live-caption or translate a session!

Mobile: Collaborate is directly integrated into Bb Student. Is currently in Beta. Should be available soon.

Collaborate functionality allows for students to be presenters. Moderator can make student presenters as well! Application sharing is so much better.  Moderators can easily stop student sharing.

Future Capabilities:

If you need the alternative to be better than the status quo from the start, you’ll never begin!

  • Mobile experience
  • Polling
  • Feedback Mechanism
  • Breakout Rooms
  • Phone Conferencing – telephony integration
  • Moodlerooms Integration

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