Mastering Blackboard Learn: A Comprehensive Guide to ECU Features

Blackboard Learn is a vital learning management system (LMS) that has become integral to modern education. Used extensively in residential and online courses, certificate programs, and clerkships, it offers convenience, accessibility, and flexibility for both instructors and students. This article explores the features of Blackboard Learn, focusing on its application at East Carolina University (ECU), and examines how these features enhance the learning experience.

Introduction

Blackboard Learn serves as a central hub for managing course materials and activities, making them readily accessible to students. Instructors can post documents, make announcements, create assessments, start discussions, and more. Students can browse course content, complete assignments, submit files, and check their grades. This system enhances the value of modern residential courses and is central to online programs.

Key Features of Blackboard Learn

Course Management and Content Delivery

Instructors can effectively manage all course-related materials and activities. This includes posting documents, creating assignments, and facilitating discussions. Students benefit from having all course content readily available in one place, making it easier to stay organized and engaged.

Assessments and Grading

Blackboard Learn provides tools for creating and managing assessments, such as quizzes, tests, and assignments. The feature-rich gradebook allows instructors to manage course grades and download them for other purposes.

Communication and Collaboration

The platform supports various communication tools, including announcements, discussion boards, and messaging. These tools facilitate interaction between instructors and students, as well as among students themselves.

Read also: Learn about Blackboard Learn at UD

Web 2.0 Tools Integration

Blackboard Learn integrates with Web 2.0 tools, which are free digital programs that can be used for creating and sharing student-generated projects. These tools offer engaging ways for students to interact with and learn from course material.

Enhancing Learning with Web 2.0 Tools

Web 2.0 tools provide students an opportunity to interact with others as they share their knowledge. Students can collaborate with classmates to create response products, or they can share completed products with peers in their class, students in other sections, or other learners around the world. While instructors may decide the core idea of what is to be shared, it is students that ultimately decide and customize how they represent details of the material.

Benefits of Using Web 2.0 Tools

Increased Engagement and Autonomy: Using Web tools increases students’ autonomy and engagement with content as they identify what they know, value, and find interesting about it.
Improved Technological Skills: Students use (and improve their skill levels with) technology devices to capture their own words, images, sounds, and work as they express acquired knowledge.
Creative Expression: Students have unlimited opportunities to individualize the content they embed in their products, and the ease of use of these tools encourages student creativity.
Authentic Interactions: Web 2.0 tools facilitate authentic interactions with content and with other learners, offering opportunities to solve real-world problems and collaborate meaningfully.

Examples of Web 2.0 Tools

Padlet: A multipurpose tool acting as an electronic corkboard where students can post ideas, photos, images, videos, or documents.
Thinglink: Useful for sharing visual information. The user uploads an anchoring image, such as a map, photograph, or drawing, and adds interactive links.
Weebly: A website builder that allows instructors and students to create websites with images, slideshows, text boxes, hyperlinked text, files, linked YouTube videos, maps, and embedded web elements.
VoiceThread: A tool for presenting material that allows instructors to record announcements or lectures, and students to create individual or group projects with audio, video, typed, or drawn comments.

Clickers (Classroom Response Systems)

Clickers, or classroom response systems, provide a technology that faculty members teaching large numbers of students can use for addressing instructional components. A clicker is a handheld wireless device that resembles a small remote control. It transmits to receivers via infrared or radio signals, sending results to the professor’s computer. Clickers allow rapid collection and analysis of student responses to questions presented by the instructor.

Benefits of Using Clickers

Increased Student Engagement: Clickers keep students engaged and increase interactivity.
Formative Assessment: Clickers maintain opportunities for formative assessment.
Attendance Tracking: Clickers can be used to take attendance via brief clicker quizzes given at the beginning of class.

UDL Alignment

Using clickers in class aligns with the UDL principle of Provide Multiple Means of Representation in several ways. Clickers can supplement the other modes of expression (i.e., class discussions, short answer exams, papers, presentations, etc.) used in classes.

Clicker Systems

Clicker systems include both student and faculty components. Students usually have hand-held devices that enable them to select a letter or number to respond to a question presented by the instructor. The instructor utilizes a receiver, software, a laptop or other computer, and a storage device (i.e., flash drive or external hard drive).

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Clicker Implementation Strategies

Attendance Quizzes: Begin class with a brief clicker quiz covering key points from the previous class to take attendance and assess learning.
Formative Assessment: Use clicker polls throughout the class to gauge student understanding of key concepts.
Small Group Activities: Engage students in active learning with clickers during small group activities.

Blackboard Learn at East Carolina University (ECU)

ECU Mobile App

ECU Mobile is a college app for East Carolina University that allows users to easily connect to InnerPirate, the social network for East Carolina University. The app offers course information, access to pay information, full library catalogs, and academic course information from Blackboard Learn.

Clicker Information for Faculty

Turning Technologies Response Card NXT is the recommended and supported audience response device at ECU. Support is provided through the central and decentralized IT staff at the university. Faculty members can contact the Instructional Technology Consultant (ITC) for their Academic Unit for more information on integrating audience response systems in their courses.

Quality Matters (QM) Training

Faculty teaching online classes are required to complete a Quality Matters (QM) training course before teaching. The Quality Matters CETL page identifies the right course, and an instructional designer at CETL can start the enrollment process.

WEB Courses

Courses labeled WEB are reviewed each semester by department chairs and deans for readiness, including updates for the current semester, content accuracy, and accessibility. An Online Course Checklist form is available on Etrieve, and all WEB courses should also undergo the Quality Matters review process.

New Features in Blackboard Learn

Institution Page: Tabs and modules previously located on the JCC Online and MyJCC page have been moved to the Institution page.
Assist Area: Additional information is available in the Assist Area.
Activity Stream: A new feature called the Activity Stream allows instructors and students to see what’s new in their courses by providing a bird’s eye view.
Global Calendar: From the global calendar, users can see all upcoming due dates and meetings across their courses in one place.

Rubrics in Blackboard

Blackboard provides a Rubric tool that allows instructors to create rubrics for any gradable item. The instructor can choose to let the student see the rubric before an item is submitted. Once submitted, the instructor can check the boxes as to the level of competency for each category and add comments as necessary for the student to review.

Read also: Drexel University LMS

Benefits of Using Rubrics

Clear Expectations: Rubrics show students what criteria an assignment will be graded based on.
Efficient Grading: Instructors can use the rubric to grade the assignment, add comments, and deduct points directly based on the criteria.
Consistency: A rubric can be used for multiple assignments in a class and cannot be edited once it has been used.

Best Practices for Using Blackboard Learn

Use Technology to Enhance Learning: Only use technology when it enhances learning and provides benefits to students and instructors.
Align Teaching Strategies to Content: Align teaching strategies (both with or without technology) to certain content.
Consider the TPACK Model: Use the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework to integrate pedagogy, content, and technology effectively.
Provide Feedback: As educators, understand the value of feedback when grading assignments.

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