by John Dennett
Twitter, Facebook, and Google Hangout – all are new in the last few years. What’s not new, though? Social learning. For centuries, connections have been facilitated through a variety of means, and the aforementioned social tools are nothing more than another way for educators and students to make these connections happen.
Long before hashtags, likes, circles and all the other familiar trappings of social media, there was psychologist Albert Bandura. In the 1970s he established the most widely-recognized theory of social learning, observing three key variables in the social learning context – the learner, the behavior, and the environment – all influencing each other. There have been and continue to be many advantages to social learning. Given the connectedness of today’s learner in a 21st century learning environment, there’s a new direction for social learning. Does Bandura’s definition of social learning still cut it?
We’re myth-busting. Click here to read on.
John Dennett, Director, Product Management, Blackboard Mobile, has spent more than fifteen years as an educational technology professional. Prior to joining the Mobile team in 2011, John worked as a Blackboard Learn Solutions Engineer for more than five years and spent most of those years managing the North American Higher Ed team. Before joining Blackboard in 2005, he worked as a charter team member on MIT’s pivotal OpenCourseWare initiative and previously managed web services and courseware for the University of Colorado at Boulder. Tweet John @jgd3.
by Lauren Krznaric
Hello everyone! My name is Lauren Krznaric and I’m thrilled to be the newest team member on the Program Marketing Team at Blackboard. The Fall is already shaping up to be packed with many great community programs including our Exemplary Course MOOC! I’m excited to also be a part of the Catalyst Awards and Exemplary Course Program. The 2013 program will kick off in early December but over the next few weeks I will be highlighting some of the 2012 winners.
Recently, I had the pleasure of speaking with one of the 2012 Blackboard Exemplary Course Award Winners, Elena Pravosudova. Pravosudova wears many hats at the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR) – a school with roughly 18,000 students and 900 faculty. She is an associate professor, an undergraduate advisor, and a University Curriculum Committee chair. The winning course, Principles of Biological Investigations, is a team effort between herself and instructional designer, Alina Solovyova-Vincent. The course also earned one of the coveted six spots for Directors’ Choice for Courses with Distinction.
by Andrea Meier
Earlier this year, a handful of leader’s from higher ed institutions met at a symposium for a day-long session to chat about key topics and issues facing their institutions. One of the topics of the day was on Social Learning – what it is and what it isn’t, and no, it’s not new. What dawned on us after the conversations is that the term means a lot of different things to different people.
So, drawing upon the key takeaways, subsequent discussions and research of our own, we’ve compiled some myths (and truths) to help you better understand what is often misunderstood about social learning.
While the list could go on, we landed on four myths of social learning. First we are going to address them and then we’re going to debunk them.
Over the next few weeks we’ll present a breakdown of these myths and take a deeper dive into what they mean for active learners and instructors..
- Myth 1: Social Learning Is New
- Myth 2: Social Learning Is the Same as Social Media
- Myth 3: Social Learning Is Just for Fun
- Myth 4: Social Learning Is a Fad
Want to be the first to know when our paper is ready? Tweet us @Blackboard with the hashtag #4myths and we’ll send you a copy before it’s available to others!
by Lynn Zingraf
We’re excited to announce that we’ll be holding an ANGEL Community Webinar on October 18th at 2:00 pm ET to share a client-influenced roadmap for the ANGEL LMS 8.0.
When we announced the indefinite extension of ANGEL’s end of life earlier this year, we also said we would invest in select enhancements to ANGEL 8.0. We held an ANGEL Suggestion Squad during the summer to solicit the community’s input to help us determine where to make those investments. The ANGEL Community Webinar is your opportunity to hear that input and learn where we’ll be investing in ANGEL 8.0 over the coming year.
by Jenn
Last month, we launched a special contest just for Blackboard Learn System Administrators. At Blackboard, we recognize these IT Professionals as the key to opening doors to new technologies at their institution. The contest distinguished its participants by recognizing the individuals in this extraordinary group as Blackboard Sys Admin Superstars because they took time out of their very busy schedule – during the back-to-school time frame – to install the latest and greatest Blackboard Building Blocks from our Publisher Partners. Because these Superstars participated in our contest, the Faculty at their institutions can now integrate dynamic digital content in to their Blackboard Learn courses for this fall. And this isn’t just any kind of dynamic digital content. It’s the content that is used by over 75% of students.
