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.
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?
By Daniel Lake, Blackboard ECP Director, and K-12 Technology Integration Specialist, OCM Board of Cooperative Educational Services (Syracuse, NY)
By Bonita Bray, Lead, E-Learning Professional Development and Consulting, Academic Information and Computing Technologies, University of Alberta
My Blackboard colleague Dara recently