Company

I had the pleasure of speaking with Karen Lynden from Rowan-Cabarrus Community College, a 2011 Blackboard Exemplary Course Program winner. As we begin the 2012 Catalyst Awards season, I thought it was important to hear from the 2011 winners to find out more about what motivated them to enter their course and how the win has impacted their profession. This is the first of a series of blogs from each of the Catalyst and Exemplary Course Award Winners. Guest Blog Post from Karen Lynden, Rowan-Cabarrus Community College It was an honor to be a recipient of a Blackboard Catalyst award, and a meaningful professional achievement. I can’t think of a better way to close out my tenure as Distance Education Coordinator and begin my new full-time faculty member role at the college! When I submitted the course for review, I did not have an expectation of receiving the award. My goal was to receive feedback and gain ideas toward course enhancement. At the time, I was involved with a college initiative for redeveloping our online course template. If I was going to lead a council that influenced the foundation of our online courses, I wanted to be able to personally demonstrate best practices through the courses I developed and facilitated -AKA “walk the talk.” Though I will never know who they specifically were by name, I really appreciate all of the reviewers’ comments that were returned to me at the end of the review cycle. Their notes reinforced the positives and provided me with new ideas.

It’s not often in life you see tangible or direct results. So many times projects are diluted, the original intent or scope changes or things beyond your control take over. Well, today I got to see an amazing result of our work which gave me goose-bumps. I manage the Blackboard Catalyst Awards and I love this program because I get to see the outstanding achievements of Blackboard clients that results in acknowledgment by our company. But what I *really* get excited about is when a client I know who is very deserving, receives accolades from their institution or organization.

The Arkansas Blackboard Users Group (ARbug) recently held their annual user’s conference, and I was lucky enough to take part in the festivities. The conference took place in beautiful Hot Springs, Arkansas on the campus of National Park Community College. The theme of the conference was, “Educate. Communicate. Collaborate,” and the group of ~100 clients, Blackboarders and Blackboard Partners did everything they could to make that theme a reality. The conference began on Wednesday, March 9 — in the brand new Frederick Dierks Center for Nursing and Health Sciences, a beautiful building with a state-of-the-art Amphitheater – with two workshops designed to build collaboration amongst two groups of the educational community – Online Course Builders and System Administrators.

Guest post from Dan Lake. Creators of online learning courses, whether professional designers or practicing instructors, are always looking for professional development materials and for good models of practice upon which to base their own efforts. Blackboard.com has created nice tutorial materials at the On Demand Learning Center. Here one can watch a series of narrated tutorials grouped into three categories:

• Understanding  the Blackboard environment and Building a Course;
• Communicating and Collaborating; and
• Assessing Learners.