Effective use of Blackboard

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Effective use of Blackboard

• Stuart YoungMae McSporran

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Dr Stuart Young

• Creating websites since 1995
• PhD Marine Geochemistry
• University of Edinburgh 1997-98
• Online Learning Research Assistant
• Unitec New Zealand 1999-2004
• Lecturer in Internet and Web Development
• All course taught in class and online
• Volunteer webmaster of the Green Party of
  Aotearoa New Zealand 1998-2004, www.greens.org.nz
• Email syoung_at_unitec.ac.nz

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Course website usage statistics

• Supplied with usage statistics for the Top 100
  Unitec Blackboard courses, for Sem 2, 2002
• Total logins, Users, Hits per user, File Size
  (MB), Total Hits
• Top 50 BB courses also included access breakdown
  by course area
• Content, Communication, Group, Tools

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Course website usage statistics

• As supplied these were ordered by total number of
  student logins.

Table 1 Total student logins for selected
Blackboard courses, Semester 2, 2002, with
position of course relative to all UNITEC
Blackboard courses when sorted by total student
logins.
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Course website usage statistics

• To assess the success of an online course, need
  to order by hits per user.

Table 2 Hits per user for selected Blackboard
courses, Semester 2, 2002, with position of
course relative to all UNITEC Blackboard courses
when sorted by hits per user.
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Course website usage statistics

• And if we sort by communication tools.

Table 3 of access to communication tools for
selected Blackboard courses, Semester 2, 2002,
with position of course relative to all UNITEC
Blackboard courses when sorted by communication
tools.
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Course website usage statistics

• And if we sort by group tools.

Table 4 of access to group tools for selected
Blackboard courses, Semester 2, 2002, with
position of course relative to all UNITEC
Blackboard courses when sorted by group tools.
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Course website usage statistics summary

• So these courses are clearly successful at
  attracting student usage.
• Very successful at attracting usage of
  communication and group tools as opposed to
  simply access to content.

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Introduction

• Our strategies include
• encouraging student visits to the course website
• minimising student errors while using the course
  website
• increasing usability of the course website
• employing good pedagogical strategies

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Introduction

• Our strategies include
• adding (and reusing) scheduled administrative and
  motivational content reinforced in a variety of
  media
• providing a familiar consistent weekly structure
• encouraging student leaders within a community of
  learners

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Encouraging student visits

• Our strategies include
• Lots of useful, up to date, quality content
• Good quality graphic design
• Providing a familiar weekly structure
• Referring to the course website in a variety of
  media
• Conducting assessments online

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Introduction

• This workshop gives strategies to ensure the
  success of an online course
• Using a restrictive Learning Management System
  (LMS)
• While minimising educator's workload

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Good Web Design

• A Blackboard course website is still a website.
• In effect we have to compete for student's
  attention with all the other websites in the
  world
• It should follow the rules of good web design so
  that it is easy to use.

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Encourage student visits / reduce student errors

• Providing a understandable structure, by chunking
  information
• Organise site how your students expect it
• A classic information architecture principle is
  to organize the site according to the typical
  users' mental model of how a site should be
  organized.
• This is usually accomplished by asking real
  users to sort cards into categorical piles
  (e.g. Bernard, 2000).

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Encourage student visits / reduce student errors

• Providing a understandable structure, by chunking
  information
• Weekly structure
• very easy to follow and understand for normal
  semester courses, not so good for irregularly
  taught courses.
• Topical structure
• organise your subject area the same way a
  librarian would with major topics and sub-topics.
  Requires your students to actually know what
  content topic they are studying today!!!
• Type of document
• PowerPoints in one folder, practical exercises in
  another. Easy for students to find the file they
  want, but they may have to visit multiple folders
  for the same class.

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Encourage student visits / reduce student errors

• Providing a understandable structure, by chunking
  information

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Encourage student visits / reduce student errors

• Reduce disorientation or lost in hypertext
  problems
• Consistent structure and appearance (e.g. colour
  coding)
• Same structure and nomenclature in a variety of
  media such as
• Course notes and handouts
• Weekly emails
• Course website "menu" pages
• Course website scheduled announcements

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Standard (weekly) content could include

• Introduction
• You can start each page of content with a brief
  introduction to that section's topics or
  activities.
• Learning Outcomes
• For a more formal approach you could start each
  page of content with that section's learning
  outcomes.
• Course Readings
• Links to further reading for your students on
  this topic, e.g. single articles.

• Useful Links
• Links to reference websites on this topic.
• Featured Tools
• The best software products or web-based tools for
  this topic.
• Featured Text Books
• The best books for this topic.
• Assessment Progress
• Tell your students what their progress should be
  on their assignments by this week.

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Encouraging student visits

• Lots of useful, up to date, quality content
• Very time consuming to assemble and check
• We are NOT saying use Blackboard as an authoring
  tool
• Continue to use Word, HTML or PowerPoint for this
• Add content to help your students use and
  navigate the course materials written in those
  formats
• Can copy relevant content from one Blackboard
  course to another, e.g. external links

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Encouraging student visits
Task Create some content in your course area,
remembering Writing For The Web guidelines.
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Encouraging student visits

• Easy to read content
• Users dont read webpages they quickly scan
  them (e.g. Morkes and Nielsen, 1997 Nielsen,
  1997)
• Text on a webpage should be
• Very succinct
• Include only one key idea per paragraph
• Use headings and sub-headings
• Use highlighted keywords or phrases, and
• Use bulleted lists when possible

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HTML Basics

• HTML is composed of tags,
• e.g. the ltPgt tag will add a line of space, the
  ltIgt tag will make text italicised and the ltBgt tag
  will make text bold.
• Most HTML tags must be closed.
• e.g. ltIgtthis text is in italicslt/Igt while ltBgtthis
  text is in boldlt/Bgt.
• HTML tags can contain attributes which modify the
  behaviour of the tags.
• A tag can contain any number of attributes, in
  any order, separated by spaces. For example ltP
  align"center"gt
• The most common HTML problems are missing out
  necessary syntax, e.g. " lt gt

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The HTML editing tool in Blackboard 6.1

• If you dont have Blackboard 6.1 at your
  institution then you may be delighted to discover
  the HTML editing toolbar that is added to the
  text box.

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The HTML editing tool in Blackboard 6.1

• The HTML editing toolbar can be turned off in
  Tools gt Personal Information.

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Why you should still learn HTML

• It is a good idea to learn some basic HTML so
  that you can
• Add HTML content to your pages when the HTML
  formatting tools are not available, and
• Identify and fix problems with the code produced
  by the HTML formatting tools.
• Extend or alter the HTML produced by Blackboard.

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The HTML You (May) Need to Know

• lth1gt Heading lt/h1gt
• lth2gt Heading lt/h2gt
• lth3gt Heading lt/h3gt
• ltbgt Bold lt/bgt
• ltigt Italics lt/igt
• lta hrefhttp//www.unitec.ac.nzgtUniteclt/agt

• ltpgt new paragraph
• ltbrgt line break
• ltulgtltligtbulleted listlt/ligt ltligtbulleted
  listlt/ligtlt/ulgt
• lthrgt Horizontal Rule

Task Add some HTML formatting (bold, italics,
lists) to your content items highlight key
words.
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Encouraging student visits

• Good quality graphic design
• There is plenty of evidence that users of the web
  expect increasingly sophisticated website visual
  designs
• They will leave the site if it doesn't measure up
  to their expectations
• We use consistently coloured backgrounds and
  borders and inline images.

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Choosing Colour Schemes

• Always use consistent colours
• each standard content item should always have the
  same colour scheme.
• It may be good to utilise the same colours on
  different courses.
• Avoid over-saturated colours, e.g.
• Choose harmonious colours - that go together.
• Choose a limited set of colours
• your institution has decided on some colours for
  the Blackboard interface and that you have chosen
  some colours for the left-hand menu. Your choice
  of colours should fit in with these.

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Encouraging student visits

• Consistently coloured backgrounds and borders.

What colour would you make each of your
standard (weekly) content items?
Task Add some borders and background colours
to your content items.
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Using Inline Images in content items

• Can use the actual images from the LMS

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Inline Images

• Many educators using Blackboard will only add a
  link to a file, in the same manner as adding a
  word document or PowerPoint file. This is a bad
  idea for most images
• the image opens up in the same window and
  overwrites the webpage - not possible to look at
  the image and the text describing it at the same
  time,
• not inviting for the students - it is one more
  link they have to click.

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Inline Images

• Blackboard also allows you to upload images to
  display within the page Inline images.
• The image is displayed to the student along with
  all the text and the rest of the page, just like
  a normal website.

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Inline Images

• Image's path is determined by right-clicking on
  the image

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Inline Images

• Image's path is determined by right-clicking on
  the image

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Encouraging student visits

• Inline Images.

What images would you bother including?
Task Add some images to your content items.
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Increase Usability

• Cross-linking
• use the possibilities of hyper-linking to allow
  students to quickly access resources
• presumably lead to more usage of the course by
  your students
• The Blackboard Course Link tool is limited
• you may like to produce links manually using HTML

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Increase Usability

• Cross-linking

What content would you cross-link between?
Task Set up a Blackboard Course Link or a
manual cross-link between some content items.
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Scheduled Announcements

• administrative and motivational content
• reinforced in a variety of media
• recycled and reused across courses and semesters,
  if appropriate
• scheduled to appear on the homepage
• After each class
• One week before each assignment due date

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Reusing Past Announcements

• Recycle posts from previous semesters.
• Build up an electronic resource of discussion
  forum posts that you can quickly copy and paste
  into a "new" posting.
• To the student it appears as if the lecturer has
  taken the time to compose a thoughtful posting,
  giving the illusion of a mentor.

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New Announcements

• Current Internet news stories.
• If an important current news story occurs we can
  copy and paste it into the discussion forums or
  announcements for multiple online courses.
• e.g. it may be appropriate for IWD1, IWD2,
  Internet Applications, and Website Management

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Scheduled Announcements

• Scheduled announcements.
• Some announcements can always be used at the same
  time each semester
• e.g. assignment due date reminders
• use the scheduled announcements feature
• easy to roll them over to the new due dates
  when preparing course schedule

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Scheduled announcements in Blackboard
Change these dates to roll announcement over.
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Increasing the usability of the course website

• Blackboard announcements are "pushed" to students
• on the student's BB homepage
• A flaw with thisis that clicking onthe link
  doesn't take the studentto the course.

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Increasing the usability of the course website

• Deep-linking
• Make it easy for the student to visit
• Flaws with this in Blackboard are that only one
  link is allowed and that it is very
  time-consuming to add them.
• Tip create an announcement with the deep link
  once, and then re-use it next semester.

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Increasing the usability of the course website

• Deep-linking examples

Task Add an announcement that promotes a page
in your content area this must have a
deep-link.
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Deep - Links

• A number of standard administrative instruction
  announcements can be found in the workbook and
  website.

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Administrative Announcements

• To minimise student errors.
• The assignment due date reminder announcements
  contain instructions on how to use the LMS tools
  (e.g. dropbox, forum)

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Administrative Announcements

• These include the actual images from the LMS

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Administrative Announcements

• A number of standard administrative instruction
  announcements can be found in the workbook and
  website.

What tools in Blackboard do your students have
problems with?
Task Copy some of the standard announcement
code to content items please no announcements
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Encouraging student visits

• Conducting assessments online
• We compel students to visit the course website by
  utilising the LMS tools in assignments such as
• Reflective journals (in "groups of one")
• Project group work using Group tools
• Structured discussions and debates conducted in
  the forums
• Self-assessment weekly quizzes

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Encouraging a community of learners and student
leaders

• Save time for the lecturers by encouraging
  students to help each other.
• i.e. we encourage student leaders
• Oliver et al., (1997) suggest that "ways to
  encourage capable students in the class to spend
  the time to view postings and submit solutions,
  and tips and tricks" should be integrated into
  the online environment.

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Encouraging a community of learners and student
leaders

• Our strategies include
• Acknowledge student excellence by highlighting
  the best student work
• Annual student website highlights gallery
• Examples of class exercises
• Offer leaders some sort of status or reward
• e.g. Leaders-only comunications.
• Developing documents explaining the leadership
  process

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Contacts

• Stuart Youngsyoung_at_unitec.ac.nz
• Mae McSporran,mmcsporran_at_unitec.ac.nz
• PDFs of our papershttp//hyperdisc.unitec.ac.nz/r
  esearch.htm