Professional Education

By Daniel Lake, Blackboard ECP Director, and K-12 Technology Integration Specialist, OCM Board of Cooperative Educational Services (Syracuse, NY)

Last year I joined the august group of professionals supporting the Blackboard Exemplary Course Program (ECP).  Moving from the role of a reviewer to that of a director was both an honor and a challenge for me.  The challenge was that I represented a new player in the world of online course delivery: the K-12 classroom.

I wondered, "How could I bring my new role into line with the rest of the group?"  After all, in my world “course design” is often considered to be that part of computer-delivered instruction that motivates students with colorful icons and animated images, the provision of slideshows and movies, and a use of varied font colors and sizes.

The ECP rubric easily moves one beyond that limited view.  (You can download the rubric here.)  Section by section the rubric lays out what one looks for when determining excellence in course delivery.  So how does one choose the BEST models of design to reward, and to share with the world?

By Bonita Bray, Lead, E-Learning Professional Development and Consulting, Academic Information and Computing Technologies, University of Alberta

The original intent of the Blackboard Exemplary Course Program (ECP), formerly called the Blackboard Greenhouse Program, was to articulate standards and practices essential in designing and facilitating high-quality online courses, along with encouraging instructors and instructional designers to implement these standards and practices.

The competitive process of the ECP worked to identify exemplary courses that met these standards and to reward the instructors and designers of these courses.  Over the past six years, the project has succeeded in these goals.  The evaluation rubric – along with the one created by CSU Chico – has become something of a touchstone for assessing online and blended courses. 

For the past seven years, the Professional Development Team of E-Learning Services at the University of Alberta has reviewed courses submitted to the ECP.  The review process is definitely time-consuming and a significant time investment by our group.  However, we’ve built in some immediate return to our unit by using the process as a professional development opportunity for both our instructors and professional development staff.

My Blackboard colleague Dara recently posted about the beta programs we’re running in advance of our upcoming Release 9.0, and I just want to follow up here by inviting Blackboard Building Blocks and PowerLinks developers to join the process.

Many of these programs cater to the specific technical and testing needs of our developer community.  Hundreds of our clients and commercial partners have invested significant amounts of time developing plugins for our products that provide additional user functionality, extend the capabilities of our learning platform and integrate with other campus systems.

The beta programs are a great opportunity for Blackboard developers to test your Building Blocks with the new version of our software, enhance your plugins to leverage the Web 2.0 look and "feel" of Project NG, experiment with new developer capabilities and resolve any other outstanding issues that we may find arise.

We’ll be working with many clients and commercial partners during this program to ensure the transitions to releases resulting from Project NG are as smooth, timely and successful as possible.  And participants in the developer beta program are representative of the entire client community.

So, if you are not yet involved and are an avid developer who has invested significant time and energy developing Building Blocks at your institution, please email me.  We want to ensure that as many scenarios as possible are examined and covered as Blackboard and the developer community move forward together.

By John Bourke, Educational Designer, Griffith University (Brisbane, Australia)

It’s official: the 2009 Blackboard Exemplary Course Program (ECP) is underway.  I know some readers of Blackboard Blogs are considering the idea of submitting a course for review by the program, so I thought I’d try to inspire the instructors and course developers among you to take the plunge, commit some time and submit a course!

For me, the ECP is a fantastic program with the worthy aim of identifying and sharing best practices in engaging online course design.  I’ve been honored to be part of the program as a director, and I find myself becoming more passionate about the program, exemplary course design and the idea of sharing best practices in online course design with the community.

Let me give you a closer look at why you should submit a course to the ECP.

For starters, and rather importantly, you will spend quality time reflecting on your course because built into the ECP nomination process is a comprehensive self-evaluation exercise using the ECP rubric.  Make no mistake: this is not something to be taken lightly, as there are over 50 criteria, covering course design, interaction, and collaboration, assessment and learner support. In addition, you will need to provide anecdotal and visual evidence to support your evaluations.  The immediate benefits are obvious; for instructors and course developers, this is a valuable and rare opportunity to undertake a reflective, self-evaluation of their course.

By Dara Millen, Client Programs Manager, Blackboard

One of the most invigorating times in the software development life cycle comes just prior to the launch of a new version. Everyone is excited about new product capabilities and enhancements to the product’s look and feel. For the first time users get to see in tangible form what exactly is coming next. The product development team is rewarded with the experience of seeing their handiwork come to life. This "beta period" is also a good time to address any last remaining issues before the product reaches the general public.

At Blackboard, we’re currently running beta programs with both users and developers in advance of the upcoming Release 9.0 to find and address these issues. This is the first beta program where CE, Vista, and Bb Classic clients are all working together.