Category Archives: VLE

Blackboard Course Sites

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Blackboard Course SitesI have just signed up to experiment with the Blackboard (Bb) Course Sites feature. It allows you to create your own online course using Blackboard.
It offers a range of styles and technical features which will be of interest to those that are regular users of Bb. I like the broad range of CSS you can choose from, far more than are offered in the production systems offered in Learn and Organization. Will this be avialable in 9.1 later this year? I shall be having a look at this in depth this coming month.

Blackboard Teaching and Learning Conference 2010, Swansea, Wales

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Swansea Marina

Swansea Marina as viewed from the Maritime Museum

The notes listed below are some of my own thoughts regarding the conference. Comments from visitors welcomed as always:
http://www.bbworld.com/2010/TeachingAndLearning/content.asp?id=1621

Detailed Programme: http://bb.blackboard.com/Swansea2010Schedule/

Day 1

Conference Keynote – Ray Henderson

  • At Bb sales conference in January the overwhelming message that they received was regarding the Durham Conference and the issues clients had who had migrated to 9.0 in the summer. This cannot happen again…
  • Tripled the resource involved with handling/resolving case issues (don’t know the absolute numbers)
  • An approach of consulting, receiving feedback and suggestions from clients was very much stressed by Ray. As an indicator of this Continue reading →

Durham Bb Users’ Conference – Thoughts

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Durham Cathedral as viewed from Durham Castle 05.01.10

Durham Cathedral as viewed from Durham Castle 05.01.10

Hello all.

What a couple of snowy days this turned out to be! Although weather apart, I thought this was very well attended, even up to the very last session on the second day.

I find that of all the conferences, seminars or symposiums I have attended in the last few years this is without doubt the most useful and relevant to me in terms of my job role and day to day activities. The presenters are of a high standard and knowledgeable about what they do – which helps greatly as most of them are practitioners.

The main pointers I have gleened are:

  • Single sign on for multiple systems (external especially) is still a big issue
  • Institutional VLE regarded as the core tool and other tools/services added as required
  • If Blackboard make a mess of the release of 9.1 they are in big trouble with HEIs in the UK
  • Start promoting Bb 9 to staff asap
  • Students are not necessarily web 2.0 or more specifically web savvy/literate
  • Students are still students and we some times miss this issue in the web hyperbole

Many thanks to Malcolm Murray, the LT staff and Durham University for hosting a well run and professional event.

Durham is 10!

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The Tenth Annual Durham Blackboard Users’ Conference will be held on Tuesday the 5th and Wednesday the 6th of January 2010.
http://www.dur.ac.uk/lt.team/blog/?page_id=405

Theme
We are inviting presentations at this conference which explore the opportunities and challenges that social networking tools offer to the more traditional (some might say ‘monolithic’) institutional online learning environments. The following examples are meant to be illustrative rather than definitive:

Now that social networking tools are legion, do we still need institutional VLEs? Should we all follow the lead of Michael Wesch, abandon Blackboard and run our classes using free web-based tools such as netvibes?
Do students want staff to get involved in their use of tools such as facebook, or is this the quickest way to kill it off? Are there educational applications for facebook?
If students want to learn using their mobile phone rather than their laptop, where does that leave Blackboard?
What can you teach someone in 140 characters? Is Twitter just for ‘Twits’ ? – That was the word David Cameron used, wasn’t it? :^)
If we embrace connectivism, should we be assessing who student’s know rather than just what they know? I’m not suggesting you grade people by the number of friends they have in facebook, but could/should we go further than the open book exam? How could we measure this?
Does it matter if student learning is occurring online in places we can’t access, audit or learn from ourselves?
Amid all the excitement, are we forgetting to ask who is excluded from the Web 2.0 world?
We will also consider proposals for Discussions or Papers on any other topics that you think the community would find of interest.

US Report – Online Learning as a Strategic Asset

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The Association of Public and Land-grant Universities-Sloan National Commission on Online Learning have produced a report detailing the views of administartors and faculties regarding online learning.

The report comprises two volumes, Online Learning as a Strategic Asset, contains the results of 231 interviews conducted with administrators, faculty, and students at 45 public institutions across the United States and more than 10,700 responses from faculty across the spectrum of teaching positions.

The two volumes can be accessed here:

  • Volume I: A Resource for Campus Leaders
  • Volume II: The Paradox of Faculty Voices: Views and Experiences with Online Learning

    • Teachers’ Aids on Creating Content for Learning Environments (TACCLE)

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    TACCLE, not the snappiest of acronyms but a site worth looking at for information and guides relating to the use, source and creation of learning materials. The TACCLE handbook can be accessed by registering on this site . To give you an idea of the content, here is a list of all of the sections:

    Section 1: Getting started
    Chapter 1: What is e-learning?
    Chapter 2: Tools that are useful for communicating and creating e-learning
    content
    Chapter 3: Weblogs
    Chapter 4: Wikis
    Chapter 5: Podcasting
    Chapter 6: Video sharing
    Chapter 7: Presentation sharing
    Chapter 8: Social bookmarking
    Chapter 9: Voice threads
    Chapter 10: RSS feed readers
    Chapter 11: Image sharing
    Chapter 12: Taxonomies, folksonomies and metadata
    Section 2: The pedagogy of e-learning
    Chapter 13: Different sorts of e-learning
    Chapter 14: The role of the teacher in e-learning
    Chapter 15: The target group
    Chapter 16: Assessment
    Chapter 17: Trends & directions in e-learning pedagogy: social software and
    web 2.0
    Section 3: Learning environments
    Chapter 18: Learning Management Systems
    Chapter 19: Personal Learning Environments
    Section 4: Creating Digital Learning Objects
    Chapter 20: Learning objects
    Chapter 21: Designing Learning Objects
    Chapter 22: Creating text-based content
    Chapter 23: Creating cartoons and comics
    Chapter 24: Publishing digital learning objects
    Chapter 25: Authoring software
    Chapter 26: Copyright and Open Educational Resources
    Section 5: Networks and communities
    Chapter 27: Networked Space
    Chapter 28: Communities of sharing

    Although the content is aimed at classroom teachers the information is useful for anyone working in the education sector and using a VLE in some form or another.

    Blackboard World Europe Conference 2009 – Barcelona

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    I recently returned from the BbWorldEurope09 Conference . The full programme and details can be viewed here:
    http://www.bbworld.com/2009/Europe/content.asp?id=1453 

    From my own personal point of view, here are  the highlights.

    • The demonstration of the Open Source e-Learning tool – XERTE - by Gill Fourt and Pat Lockley from The University of Nottingham. Here  is an online tour of the tool. A simple e-Learning tool to use, very enthusiastically delivered by Pat
    • The explanation and demonstration of Yorkshare by Wayne Britcliffe and Richard Walker. The way in which they have developed this area and the high standard of presentation is a leading example to many HE VLEs
    • Trevor Batchelor (Uni of Birmingham), Adrian L. Powell (Uni of Sheffield), Susannah J. Quinsee (City Uni London) and Vicki Simpson (Uni of Surrey) spoke about the move from Bb Vista to Bb 8 or 9 and how each of their institutions are approaching this move. Most of the HEIs have taken the opportunity to review what the institutions currently provides and evaluate their staff needs for the immediate future.
    • John Couperthwaite and Rob Jones (University of Birmingham) explained and demonstrated thier use of the lecture capture software, Echo360. A clear and engaging explanation of thier work to date, similar to that we have done at Newcastle University. Good to see John login live to the system, always a big plus in my book. They have used the system to capture lectures on an ad hoc basis and again as was our experience students find the resource extremely useful and lecture attendance has hardly decreased.

    A great opportunity to visit the city of Barcelona and meet some of the Catalan people. A shame I didn’t get the chance to see more of it.

    Durham Blackboard Users’ Conference

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    chalk_bbI attended the ninth annual Durham Blackboard Users’ Conference on January 8th and 9th. This was my second attendance at the conference, however, this time I presented at one of the sessions along with my colleague.

    We presented on a project I am involved with at work which is about lecture and event capture implementation and use (ReCap). From the feedback we’ve received it was a successful presentation, with several questions fielded afterwards. I think in the near future we will be welcoming several visits from other HEIs and FEs about our service.

    Full details about the conference can be found here.

    Here is the PowerPoint presentation of our talk.

    Durham Bb Conf 2009 Lecture and Event Capture
    View more presentations or upload your own. (tags: university newcastle)

     The facilities offered by Durham University for the event were first class. The Calman Learning Centre was a great venue, well equiped, spacious and a great vista of Durham City with the Cathedral being the focal point. I look forward to the next one in January 2010.