Blackboard Blogs

Lace Up Your Boots for a Walk into the Unknown: A View of Blackboard ECP Reviewer's Training

By Matt MacLaughlin, Jr., Professor of Logistics, Army Logistics Management College

Now that the 2009 Blackboard Exemplary Course Program (ECP) is underway, the next important step toward its success must be taken – the finding of motivated individuals to review the submitted courses.

The idea of actually participating on this side of the ECP can seem daunting at first, I admit.  But with the time and care the ECP directors take in training submission evaluators, the entire evaluative process becomes much less scary – easy and rewarding, in fact.

When I signed up to become an ECP evaluator during the program’s first year, my greatest fear was that the colleagues with whom I worked online might think I didn’t know what I was doing.  Even though we all come from the community of educators and learners, hoping in some way to identify and promote best practices in engaging online course design, I still felt my contribution to the program somehow would be inadequate.  I carried this fear within me as I moved forward in the evaluation process.

But then I received emails with instructions that led me to information I needed to review and guidelines with which I needed to become familiar.

Email Less, Interact More on the New Blackboard Connections Site

Looking for an easy way to find your colleagues at other learning institutions?  Seeking a regional or special-interest user group?  Want to learn best practices for e-Learning and the use of educational technology?

You can do all of these at the new community website for Blackboard users, Blackboard Connections.

To access the new Blackboard Connections site, you can use the same easy login as you do for Behind the Blackboard and EduGarage.  If you don't have one of these accounts, you can simply sign up for a Connections account on the new site.

(If you had an account on the previous Connections site, that account ID and login will not work on the new site.  Rather, your Behind the Blackboard ID will work.  If you need to visit the previous Connections site, please go to: http://communities.blackboard.com.)

The Blackboard Exemplary Course Program (ECP) Rubric

By Daniel Lake, Blackboard ECP Director, and K-12 Technology Integration Specialist, OCM Board of Cooperative Educational Services (Syracuse, NY)

Last year I joined the august group of professionals supporting the Blackboard Exemplary Course Program (ECP).  Moving from the role of a reviewer to that of a director was both an honor and a challenge for me.  The challenge was that I represented a new player in the world of online course delivery: the K-12 classroom.

I wondered, "How could I bring my new role into line with the rest of the group?"  After all, in my world “course design” is often considered to be that part of computer-delivered instruction that motivates students with colorful icons and animated images, the provision of slideshows and movies, and a use of varied font colors and sizes.

The ECP rubric easily moves one beyond that limited view.  (You can download the rubric here.)  Section by section the rubric lays out what one looks for when determining excellence in course delivery.  So how does one choose the BEST models of design to reward, and to share with the world?

Become a Reviewer: Learn Best Practices & Support the Blackboard ECP Program

By Bonita Bray, Lead, E-Learning Professional Development and Consulting, Academic Information and Computing Technologies, University of Alberta

The original intent of the Blackboard Exemplary Course Program (ECP), formerly called the Blackboard Greenhouse Program, was to articulate standards and practices essential in designing and facilitating high-quality online courses, along with encouraging instructors and instructional designers to implement these standards and practices.

The competitive process of the ECP worked to identify exemplary courses that met these standards and to reward the instructors and designers of these courses.  Over the past six years, the project has succeeded in these goals.  The evaluation rubric – along with the one created by CSU Chico – has become something of a touchstone for assessing online and blended courses. 

For the past seven years, the Professional Development Team of E-Learning Services at the University of Alberta has reviewed courses submitted to the ECP.  The review process is definitely time-consuming and a significant time investment by our group.  However, we’ve built in some immediate return to our unit by using the process as a professional development opportunity for both our instructors and professional development staff.

Calling All Blackboard Developers: You Can Still Join Our Beta Program!

My Blackboard colleague Dara recently posted about the beta programs we're running in advance of our upcoming Release 9.0, and I just want to follow up here by inviting Blackboard Building Blocks and PowerLinks developers to join the process.

Many of these programs cater to the specific technical and testing needs of our developer community.  Hundreds of our clients and commercial partners have invested significant amounts of time developing plugins for our products that provide additional user functionality, extend the capabilities of our learning platform and integrate with other campus systems.

The beta programs are a great opportunity for Blackboard developers to test your Building Blocks with the new version of our software, enhance your plugins to leverage the Web 2.0 look and "feel" of Project NG, experiment with new developer capabilities and resolve any other outstanding issues that we may find arise.

We'll be working with many clients and commercial partners during this program to ensure the transitions to releases resulting from Project NG are as smooth, timely and successful as possible.  And participants in the developer beta program are representative of the entire client community.

So, if you are not yet involved and are an avid developer who has invested significant time and energy developing Building Blocks at your institution, please email me.  We want to ensure that as many scenarios as possible are examined and covered as Blackboard and the developer community move forward together.