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BbWorld13 – Blackboard Learn’s New Social Learning Network

Live Blog for the BbWorld13 session: Blackboard Learn’s New Social Learning Network

Presenters: Melissa Stange, Francesca Goneconti Monaco, Terry Patterson

Session Description:

This presentation will cover the following:

  • Differences between existing social networks & Bb learn’s new global learning network
  • Benefits of using Bb’s Social Tools
  • How to implement
  • Lessons Learned
  • Answers to common concerns
  • Q&A

Session Begins at 2pm:

Overview of Social Learning Tools:

What is Social Learning – not one clear definition.  We all have different ways of describing it.  Introduced back in the 70’s.   Learning that takes place at a wider scale than individual or group learning, up to a societal scale, through social interrogation between peers.

“Learners learning from each other”

Why Now? – Because of the expectations and needs of today’s active learners.  For today’s students in our highly connected, information intensive world, learning is a 24/7 enterprise and the traditional school day is no more!

What students want in education mirrors what they experience outside of education.

Easily connect with educational community online.  (facebook not ideal) Educational network is different.

Educational Network – current and former classmates, professors, clubs, committees.  (not just friends).  In current social network it is hard to identify who is in your educational network.

Desire to keep networks separate! 60% of students say they want to keep academic and social lives separate.  Same amoutn think it is important to have an online forum to communicate with other students.  Cautious of mixing academic and social lives.

What are the tools?

Global Learning Network that connects users across/within institutions and countries.

How students see networks:

Facebook = Social
LinkedIn = Professional
Blackboard = Learning

Profiles – (photo/description) & Profile Wall.
People – Ability for users to discover learning network online.  Directory of entire institution, courses, global learning network
Spaces – Ad-Hoc group area.  Spaces can be created in less than a minute by anyone for anything.  (Study groups, research projects, interest groups, departments)
Messages – Asynchronously communicate 1 to 1 and with a group of people

Social profile tools go beyond basic and reach out to global connections.  Cloud gives identity, social lets you connect, collaborate and communicate.

Plan – Find early Adopters (Departments, programs, etc) Discover issues, questions and impact on faculty staff, students.

Policy – Find and fill gaps on current policies. Create new policies to fill in gaps.  Clear policy and where information is stored with affected parties on campus.

Procedures – Develop procedures to apply policy changes. Who implements/manages the procedures.

Implement – Pilot Group then full release.

Educate – Social Media vs. Social Learning

Usage, Intellectual Property, Harassment, social Accountability & Responsibility

FERPA directory information

Town Halls & Email Alerts

Bb Demos

Within 1st 1/2 hour 72 people adopted.  Made MyBb a tab.

Reporting on SysAdmin tab is on the Road Map.

help.blackboard.com has great FAQs and a communication & Adoption toolkit as well as videos on Youtube.

There’s more to learn video – a day in the life of a student using social learning tools.

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BbWorld 2013 Session – Effective Interactive Tools and Web 2.0 Projects Promote Student Learning & Engagement

Session Title: BbWorld 2013 Session – Effective Interactive Tools and Web 2.0 Projects Promote Student Learning & Engagement

Shu-Hui (Susan) Chang, Ph. D.
Director Distance Education
Computer Science Department
Iowa State University

(Seated and waiting for session to start)

Sound Teaching Pedagogies, Interactive Components and Effective Technologies are the hallmarks of an engaging online learning experience.

Distance Learning Evaluation Guide from American Council on Education

Before integrating interactive components in your course, focus on design.  (Systematic Design complete with Objectives, weekly modules, & technology that accommodates different learning styles)

Integrating Interactive Components

  • Build Online Community
  • Engage Learning
  • Facilitate Student instructor and student student interaction

Start from beginning.  Include media in Introductory Activities (Don’t be afraid to do audio/video).  Let the student start out as course content owners.

Use Case Study’s for group projects to build online learning community.  Students research their own project and comment on each other’s reports.

Use real-time Chat sessions – (Text chat is fine)  Guide the discussion by providing rules of the road so that the students know what to focus on.  Prompt with each question.  For example: What is Web 2.0?

Stream lecture-ets (5-15 minute) lectures that connect to Learning Activities.

Be Collaborative with Wikis, have students build the content and then provide feedback on each other’s section.  Include positive feedback and constructive Criticism in comments.  (provide netiquette guidelines for flaming etc)

Activities:

Use Shutterfly to Introduce yourself to the class.  Incorporates photos and text.
Use Prezi – Give students a research topic to present on (eg. Network Topology)

Tools:

Presentation Tools
Prezi, Brain Shark, Knovio, Projeqt.com, PhotoSnack,

Video Tools
TED, Animoto, Capzles (Capzles Classrooms), Jing, Podsnack(Custom Flash audio players), Tubesnack (create video playlists and sharew ith others)

Mobile

Audioboo(record sound to cellular device and attach picture to sound), Instagram, cel.ly (creates a social network using cell phones)

Community Tools

Bubbl.us(mind maps, brainstorming diagrams), Voki, Classtools (create interactive games, quizzes etcc), Wikis, Facebook, Blogger,

Other Tools
Blabbberize, Glogster, Quizlet, Toon Doo (create cartoons games), Fodey (fake newspaper), Pixlr (photo editor), Pintrest

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BbWorld13 Breakout Session – Micro-blogging to Increase Engagement

BbWorld13 Breakout Session – Micro-blogging to Increase Engagement

Sprang from: Implementing Twitter into classes as a teaching tool.

Use hashtag #teachwithtwitter to share best practices.

Use of twitter came about from challenge of increasing retention.  What does engagement mean?  Connecting all institutional constituents to the activities of learning, discovery and the academic topics of study.

Twitter allowed use of social media in classes and beyond, tied to institutional mission, programmatic learning outcomes, & class objectives.  Connect to thought leaders in the industry to apply what they are doing to academic work.

Tell students to BYOD to class.  “If I find you on Facebook, “I get to post your status”.

276 students, 13 hasthtags and 10 professors.

Twitter is:

  • a great way to have students do research
  • a great way to connect with thought leaders in industry
  • a great way to engage students and faculty
  • a great way to affirm student knowledge  (retweets, favorites etc..)

Students felt more connected.

Twitter is not:

  • PRIVATE
  • A way for instructors to STALK students
  • A home work reminder tool!

Follow every major leader, mover/shaker in your field.  Prompts prof to prompt students to look at questions they should be thinking about!

Engagement uptick:

Building relationships via tweets and re-tweets.  Students that may not interact in face-to-face environment may feel more comfortable in the twittersphere.  Gain insight into your students through micro-blogging.

Affirming students by:

  • Followers
  • Retweets/Mentions
  • Favorited
  • Direct response/reply
  • Start a hashtag trend!

Bonus Results:  Creating Twitter pages for professional/business uses

In Blackboard – Use Twitter widget to display twitter feed!

Resources:

Bit.ly will shorten URLs  (also tracks clicks)
HootSuite, TweetDeck  (HootSuite allows you to schedule tweets – making them relevant to when your followers are reading their feeds)Twitonomy – Metrics on Tweets

Lessons Learned

  • Will continue to do this
  • More training for everyone (hashtag/mention use)
  • Help students understand Twitter (be clear on assignment layout)
  • Don’t assume all Gen Y students are tech savvy
  • Students were afraid of doing it “wrong” based on “multiple choice” mentality
  • Better Balance of quantifiable pieces with softer side

Twitter Assignment 1: Hashtag, you’re it!

  • Current event searches

Twitter Assingment 2: Follow you, Follow me

  • Making Connections to industry Leaders (make a professional account)

Twitter Assignment 3: Tweet That, Tweety Bird

  • Sharing ideas with others
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World’s First eLearning Best Practice Music Video

A few weeks back, I did a post about an elearning best practice that turned into a song.  Well that song has finally been turned into a music video.  If this doesn’t help you to remember to check the links and embeds to external content in your online course, I don’t know what will!

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The Course Blog: An Online Instructor’s Best Friend

Course BlogAn online instructor has many “friends” or tools to help facilitate communication, assessment, collaboration and learning in their online course. In many instances a faculty will chose one tool over the other for obvious reasons. A course blog can cover a number of bases and it is a medium that many of your students will already be familiar for helping to digest information. This blog post (<– see what I did there) will cover just a few ways that a course blog can benefit you and your students.

  1. Engage StudentsA Blog Can Keep Your Students Informed and Engaged

    It is already a best practice for you to communicate regularly with your students. A blog can help facilitate that practice by helping you to post weekly (or more depending upon your need). Ensure your students have a expectation of having to check the blog regularly and can expect (from you) a post each week.

    Part of what you are trying to do here is remind your students of upcoming assignments, readings, or research as well as giving them waypoints or signposts where they should be paying attention.

  2. FeedbackUse the Blog for Feedback

    One of the best ways to utilize your course blog is to make it a feedback mechanism. Letting your students know that you are reading their assignment submissions, discussions and other assessments assures them that you are taking an active part on their learning journey. For example, use the blog post to sum up student discussion posts or submitted papers for the week giving kudos (by name) to students who are really bringing it home and challenges where the class maybe coming up a little short. You can turn the feedback around and have them comment on a blog post to collect feedback.

  3. Searching Made EasyThe Course Blog Makes Finding Information Easy

    Have a course blog means that your students will know where to go to find the out what’s happening in your course. They know that they can use the tool to search for the data they want.

    Digging through a syllabus or checking old announcements can be time consuming for some students. The course blog provides a familiar interface that is easy to search for needed information. In many instances, students can search by category, key word or date (week, month etc..). The blog keeps an archive of old posts so your students will know exactly where to look.

Keeping your students informed, engaged and in the loop is key to ensure they have a successful leg in their educational journey. The course blog allows you to let your students know what’s going on, provide feedback and provides an easy way to find all of that information.

*Blackboard Learn provides the added benefit of associating your picture with each post and your students’ pictures with each comment, thereby making the experience more personal and connecting.

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Want to Improve your Online Course? Ask your students!

Keep Calm and Ask Your StudentsIn previous posts we have discussed the importance of feedback in your online course.  We’ve looked at how students obtain feedback from student/course, student/instructor and student/student interactions.  There is however another important type of feedback that can be gathered in your online course(s)…….Student Opinion!

We can all be a little touchy when it comes to something that we have put measurable effort into, but if something is worth your effort, it is also worth you finding ways to improve it.  Here are a few suggestions for getting feedback from your students:

Blog – Week in Review
Have your students do a reflective blog post each week that charts the highs, lows and in-betweens of their activity in your online course.  Start them off letting them know that you are looking for honest/candid observations of their experience that week.

Trying Something New? – Do a Post assignment Survey
Maybe you are using a wiki for the first time in class, or maybe you are trying out synchronous web meetings.  Whatever you are doing, ask your students how it went, how it could be better and what they got out of it.

Three Letter Acronym for Success – KWL
What do you know?  What do you want to know?  What have you learned?  These three questions are key to ensuring that your students know you are listening.  By asking the first two questions you can, with the help of your students’ answers, drive learning toward their needs.  By asking the last question you can be sure that any objectives you set are met by reading their answers.

Be Formative and Summative
It is nice to find out what your students think when they finish your course, but wouldn’t it be nicer to know if they are really enjoying a certain aspect of your course or have problems with another while they are doing it?

There are other ways to gauge your students’ feelings on your course through discussions, assignments, surveys and synchronous “touching base” online meetings, but hopefully these few can you get started and allow you to improve your course and your students’ online experience.

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Infographic: 5 Strategies for Success when Teaching Online with an Example of Each

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Check Your Course Before they Wreck Your Course!

Before You BeginBefore you give your students access to your course, go through it with Edit Mode off and/or use the Student View button to make sure all your content and tools are accessible and easy to find.

Note: Use your course’s navigation menu because students can’t navigate via the Control Panel.

A few things you should be looking for are:

  • When a student enters the course do they know where to go and what to do?
  • Are the items in the Nav Menu clear? For instance, ‘Content’ means anything to a new student. It would make more sense to them if it was more specific, like ‘Course Materials’ or ‘Modules’
  • Are all the tools you want the students to use linked from the Nav Menu or a Content Area? An easy way to check is by looking at the Nav Menu in Edit View.
  • Can all the Tests and Assignments be taken and submitted?
  • Do links to other places on the web work?  (YouTube videos can be pulled down in a blink of an eye and web content can disappear at any time).

Other things to check while in Edit Mode:

  • Links to hidden tests and assignments are not broken. Its good practice to re-deploy all your tests (if you’ve copied the course) to ensure that the links are correctly attached to the Grade Center.
  • The Grade Center columns are correctly displayed to students (hidden or revealed) and the weighting and points possible are correct.
  • Be sure due dates on items in your course are correct (these can now be changed easily by dragging and dropping with the Calendar feature in My Blackboard.
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You Gotta Know when to Blog’em?

Gambler

Please excuse “The Gambler” reference in the Post topic, but a recent session at the Blackboard World conference in New Orleans got me thinking about this topic.  Throughout the course of any given semester I get the following question asked me often:


“So I want to use these great tools you keep telling us about, but how do I know when to use a Blog, Discussion Board or Wiki?”

Trying to find the right answer to that question sometimes feels like trying to explain what wind is without being able to feel it.  I generally like to have examples in front of me.  However, in an effort to put my thoughts into writing, let’s start by giving some origin statements and move into concepts and features for each:

BlogsBlogs:

Blog is short for Web Log.  It is an author-centered document that is generally administered by one user or a small group.  Comments (discussion) is encouraged, but the main thrust is the blog post.  The purpose of the Blog is to share a “log” of events or to journal.  It could chronicle a reading, media object, event or personal insight.  Blogs are generally presented with the most recent posting first as well as a calendar list of other posts and an archive.  Blogs (like this one) tend to be more conversational in nature and are designed around text and media.  Once you make a post you tend to move on to the next one unless you need to make an edit or read comments.  Each post is owned by the person who made it.

Blogs nowadays have a plethora of features including: subscription, archiving, widgets (plugins that link blogs to other social media (twitter, facebook, etc.), listservs.  They also allow tagging, categories and the ability to customize how they look.  Thanks to tagging, blogs are easily searchable. They also tend to be media-rich.

Discussion BoardsDiscussion Boards:

Spawned from ye olde Bulletin Boards.  They are usually topic centered given a discussion prompt by teacher/moderator.  They can be administered by the instructor or group depending upon how roles are defined. The boards are reply driven meaning postings and replies make up the structure of the Discussion Board.  Discussion boards are primarily used to discuss topics posited by the instructor self-generated by a group.  They also fulfill a support function (Course Q&A, Virtual office).  Depending on the type of discussion activity, posts can be formal or conversational.  This type of activity is also static in that posters don’t go back and re-edit their posts, they just continue posting in the thread.  Poster’s own their own posts, but roles can be assigned to make participants, moderators, managers, graders etc..

Discussion board features are not as exhaustive as Blog or Wiki features, but they do allow file attachments, are very collaborative and easy to navigate.

WikisWikis:

Wikis get their name from the Hawaiian word “wiki wiki” which means “quick”.  Boiling the concept down is a collaborative web document or webpage.  They are generally document centered, project based items.  They are administrated by all of those involved in the wiki. Comments can be employed when needed but are not part of the main thrust.  You use wikis to create documents, projects, resources, case studies, portfolios, etc..  The wiki organization and design is dependent upon whatever method the individual or group decides.  Wikis are subject to constant change.  They can be created, shared, edited and re-edited over and over (think Wikipedia).

Wikis today come with many features and facets including: comments, archives, widgets, rich-media experience, WYSIWYG web interface. It looks and feels like a webpage so navigation and construction is very straight forward.

That’s great, but when do I use them?

Blogs:

Blogs are good for reflection or for journaling.  They offer chronological list of postings.   They are also good for podcasting, photoblogs and posting from mobile devices or “moblogging”.

Discussion Boards:

Good for topic based discussions, opinions and response driven assignments.

Wikis:

Project based assignments, repository-based assignments, portfolios, case studies, course documentation, collaboratively produced study guides, group work.

I hope this helps some of you put when and where to use these tools into perspective.

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