Higher Ed

Buffalo State will be launching a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on January 16^th called “Locating, Creating, Licensing and Utilizing OERs”. They have utilized CourseSites by Blackboard as their MOOC platform.

I interviewed Beth Burns and Mark McBride, from the course design team, to learn more about their experiences throughout the design and development process. Beth Burns is an Instructional Designer at Buffalo State and Adjunct English Instructor, Genesee Community College. Mark McBride is the Coordinator of Library Instruction and Coordinator of Library Liaison Program at Buffalo State.

1. What was the motivation behind providing a course on Open Educational Resources (OER)?

We are both strong advocates for affordable and accessible education for everyone. We believe that everyone should be able to achieve their educational goals regardless of cost. We also have witnessed first hand that many educators either are unaware of what OERs are or how they can be used in their teaching and scholarship. Furthermore, we know many faculty who are using OER and their work with them is not being recognized as scholarly. We wanted to build a course that could create a community of practice. A place where like-minded people could gather, discuss, support each other and create.

One of the highest levels of education achievement is receiving your doctorate. As we are all aware, Doctors are experts in their field of study. They are often called on for expert reviews and feedback on questions related to their field. Believe it or not, even Blackboard has “Doctors” available to provide you with their expertise on one subject: Blackboard.

Ask The Doctors (formerly Ask Dr. C for the fans out there) is a discussion forum for any and all technical and pedagogical questions relating to Blackboard Learn and now Blackboard Collaborate. Your questions are reviewed and carefully answered by a team of “Doctors” with over 115 years of combined hands-on experience working with these Blackboard products. This hand selected group of seven experts is chock-full of knowledge from their professional experiences as Instructional Technologists, System Administrators, and Directors of Instructional Design.

Next time you have a question about Blackboard Learn or Blackboard Collaborate, search the wealth of knowledge on Ask The Doctors or just post your question on to the forum. The “Doctors” are listening.

Visit our website to meet the Doctors for Blackboard Learn and our two new Doctors for Blackboard Collaborate. Or head straight to the forum at discussions.blackboard.com

One of the hardest adjustments for students transitioning from a traditional classroom to an online environment is feeling connected to their teacher. Many times in online courses students are a username while instructors become virtual computers responding back to questions and grading projects. But, this doesn’t have to happen with a few key tricks to creating an environment where online teachers become real.

Here are three simple tips:

Tip 1: Develop a sense of connection between yourself and the students early on in the course through an introduction discussion. Have students post about themselves in discussion boards or blogs to the rest of the class encouraging them to respond to each other. (Don’t forget to include some background questions that relate to the course in this discussion.) As the instructor, the biggest way to start that connection is personalizing your replay to each student, instead of just a cookie cutter response.  To get the thread started, post about yourself with some personal information (your interests, favorite book, etc). Offering personal information will help students connect with you and make it so you aren’t a robotic, online teacher.

As another year comes to a close here at Blackboard, we want to share some of our readers’ favorite blog posts from 2012.  You clicked, you shared, you commented.  Here’s what got the most attention:

• Coming NOW to a school near you: The Active Learner: A blog post showcasing our new animated video that illustrates the voice of an Active Learner and the future of education.

• A Teaching Strategy with Success Stories: The Flipped Classroom :  A teacher turned Blackboard employee tells her story of moving into a “Flipped Classroom” model.

Take a chance; don’t worry about what could go wrong.

So often, we worry about what could go wrong when trying new methods at reaching our students. Problem is, our students have changed. No longer can we stand in front of the classroom and lecture for 50 minutes. No longer can we simply upload a slide deck and expect our students to simply ingest the information. They want to be engaged and part of the learning process.