Mike Straus, Senior Product Manager, talks about one of the most exciting product launches of the year, Blackboard Drive. Blackboard Drive is a new desktop application which makes accessing, managing and editing files in the Blackboard Learn Content Collection as easy as working with files on your local computer. Check out his presentation from EDUCAUSE 2011:
If you’re reading this blog post, there’s about 99.99% certainty that you’re also someone who’s using (or about to start using) a learning management system (LMS). With the wide and varied range of tools and capabilities that an LMS can provide, it’s no wonder they they’ve become an instructor’s standard platform for course creation, course management, and course information. Your students are likely using this LMS, as well, logging in to check on schedules, assignments, and grades. Whether the education you’re providing is virtual, traditional, or blended, an LMS is likely its lifeblood.
Guest Post by Brian Nielsen, Northwestern UniversityIt’s really exciting when you see students pitching in together to work on a class project. They’re excited, their conversation is animated, there’s joy in the sharing of the knowledge they are soaking up, and often there’s pride. Class projects don’t always go this way, and, for the instructor, sometimes they’re risky. If motivation wanes, if one or two students in the group don’t pull their own weight, a project can fall flat, leaving the teacher to pick up the pieces with a shrug, or maybe an extra test. But when it works, it’s wonderful.
Here at Northwestern University we’ve seen some of those great projects, and, we think, have had a hand in making them happen through our development of a new Blackboard Building Block that we’ve called Bboogle. We chose Bboogle as a concatenation of “Blackboard” and “Google,” a rather obvious play on the “Bb” Blackboad logo and Google Apps for Education, a service very quickly growing in popularity across the country. We use the pronunciation “ba-boogle” to signal to others the double-B, making sure that people recognize the significance of Blackboard as a partner in bringing this software into being. “Ba-boogle” does sound a bit funny, but the humor is meant to signify something too: the joy of helping foster collaborative learning experiences for our students.
Guest post by Misty Hanks, Coordinator of Instructional Design, at Morehead State University in Kentucky.
Over the past several years, Morehead State’s online course adoption (both hybrid and fully online) has grown considerably. In fact, nearly every course has an online component and purely online courses grew from 17% to 28% during the last five years. With the success of our online program, coupled with a limited budget, we had to consider the most appropriate learning management system (LMS) for our University.
When we started the evaluation process, we were using Blackboard Learn 7.3. We considered either upgrading to Blackboard Learn 9.1 or adopting Moodle with the overall goal to find a solution that would help faculty create interactive and engaging learning environments while remaining cost-effective. We spoke with other institutions and faculty about their experiences using both solutions. The feedback highlighted the overall simplicity of the updated Learn 9.1 interface, the inclusion of SafeAssign™ (the plagiarism detection solution) and the ease of the upgrade. I’m thrilled to say that we are extremely happy with our decision to upgrade to Learn 9.1.
What does openness and efficiency look like bundled into one?
Blackboard continues to find ways to innovate and make users more efficient in their daily tasks. There are various ways we can accomplish this. It may be through the core Blackboard Learn™ platform. Or, it may be through Blackboard Building Blocks™ where we augment the platform and provide clients with a greater choice of instructional tools. And, as we develop, we continue to consider how we can contribute back to not only the education community, but the developer community, as well. We’re excited to announce two important Building Blocks – Bboogle and the Paste from Word Mashup – are now available and certified for the Blackboard Learn platform.
It’s really exciting when you see students pitching in together to work on a class project. They’re excited, their conversation is animated, there’s joy in the sharing of the knowledge they are soaking up, and often there’s pride. Class projects don’t always go this way, and, for the instructor, sometimes they’re risky. If motivation wanes, if one or two students in the group don’t pull their own weight, a project can fall flat, leaving the teacher to pick up the pieces with a shrug, or maybe an extra test. But when it works, it’s wonderful.
Here at Northwestern University we’ve seen some of those great projects, and, we think, have had a hand in making them happen through our development of a new Blackboard Building Block that we’ve called Bboogle. We chose Bboogle as a concatenation of “Blackboard” and “Google,” a rather obvious play on the “Bb” Blackboad logo and Google Apps for Education, a service very quickly growing in popularity across the country. We use the pronunciation “ba-boogle” to signal to others the double-B, making sure that people recognize the significance of Blackboard as a partner in bringing this software into being. “Ba-boogle” does sound a bit funny, but the humor is meant to signify something too: the joy of helping foster collaborative learning experiences for our students.
