Blackboard Blogs

Putting More Social into our Social Software

I'm happy to announce (if you haven't already seen the press release or received the email announcement, that is), that my team, the Blackboard Beyond Initiative, rolled out a batch of new features for Scholar. These features focus on around enhanced profiles, user search, and social networking capabilities.

You know, when we first launched Scholar we talked about it as a social bookmarking application. And that's not inaccurate -- Scholar is a social bookmarking application. However, after we launched, I realized that "social bookmarking" isn't a term that's meaningful to most Blackboard users. Some informal, non-scientific surveys conducted by a few of our client institutions even indicated that only a few percent of their student users on campus were familiar with social bookmarking as a concept or with social bookmarking applications.

New Factor in High-Tech Gender Gap: Confidence?

In an article titled “Software Design Research Adds New Perspective to High-Tech Gender Gap,” the Associated Press reported earlier this week on a recent academic examination of the widening gender gap in computer science.

The AP reports statistical data to a (disheartening) downward trend:

. . . the percentage of bachelor's degrees in computer science awarded to women fell from 37 percent in 1985 to just 22 percent in 2005, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, even as women made gains in other science and math-based fields.

Laura Beckwith, the academic researcher discussed in the AP article, who is a recent computer science Ph.D. from Oregon State University and soon-to-be Microsoft employee, and her advisors examined a new dimension in gender-gap theories: how the confidence displayed by women and men may influence the development of their software programming skills.

The article details the experiment conducted by Beckwith for her dissertation; she examined the process of software debugging (specifically, the AP describes it as “finding and fixing errors in spreadsheets filled with formulas”) to determine the extent to which the confidence of the female and male participants affected their results.

The article is an interesting read, and Beckwith’s dissertation can be viewed online in the Oregon State library archive.

What Is Xtreme Podcasting?

Jane Himmel and Julie Navar of the University of North Texas led a Webinar last week titled "Podcasting Xtreme" for the Blackboard Bravo! program.  The following are their thoughts about the Webinar.

Our Webinar was a condensed version of a three-hour workshop we gave at BbWorld '07 last July.  Last week we had about 30 attendees and there was a lot of good interaction.

When we talk about "extreme" podcasting, we're not just talking about cutting-edge tools.  Rather, we're trying to help people take their podcasting to the next level by delving more deeply into the design process of producing an effective, educational podcast.  How?  Primarily by taking an instructional design approach, and analyzing information needs and audiences to determine if podcasting is the right match with your instructional needs.

During our Webinar we also discussed current trends; how to incorporate music and other elements of commercial podcasts; hardware and software needs; and ideas about distribution - all with the goal of helping you create a more creative and engaging final podcast.

We hope you'll give the archived recording our Webinar a listen.

Happy and effective podcasting!

Jane Himmel
Associate Director
Center for Distributed Learning
University of North Texas

Julie Navar
Instructional Designer
Center for Distributed Learning
University of North Texas