Mastering UAMS Blackboard Learn: A Comprehensive Guide
Blackboard Learn is a vital tool for students, faculty, and staff at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) and Arkansas Children's Hospital (ACH). This guide provides a detailed overview of how to effectively use Blackboard Learn, including making courses available, managing assignments, leveraging the AI Design Assistant, ensuring accessibility, and utilizing interlibrary loan services.
Getting Started: Making Your Course Available
At the start of each semester, instructors must make their Blackboard shells available to students, granting them access to course content. The Qwickly tool is no longer used for this purpose. Ensure your course is visible so students can begin learning from day one.
Efficient Assignment Management
When setting up assignments, it's crucial to input due dates. If you've copied your course from a previous semester, remember to update the due dates for all assignments. The Date Management tool simplifies this process, saving you valuable time and preventing student confusion.
Monitoring Student Progress
eLearning offers a valuable Brownbag workshop focused on monitoring students within Blackboard. This 50-minute session covers using the new attendance tool, running course reports, and analyzing course analytics to track student performance. These insights can help instructors identify struggling students and provide timely support.
Unleashing the Power of the Blackboard AI Design Assistant
The Blackboard AI Design Assistant is a powerful tool designed to help you create and improve existing course elements. This includes assignments, test questions, learning modules, discussions, journals, rubrics, and question banks. By leveraging AI, you can save time and enhance the quality of your course content.
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Generating Engaging Discussions
The AI Design Assistant can generate engaging discussion prompts for your students. By providing a detailed description, setting the desired cognitive level, and defining the complexity, you can create discussions that stimulate critical thinking and active participation.
Auto-Generating Assignment Prompts
The AI Design Assistant can also auto-generate assignment prompts based on your course content. To refine the selection, provide a thorough description, select the appropriate cognitive level, and adjust the complexity. The AI will generate three assignment prompts for you to choose from.
Creating Rubrics with Ease
Generating rubrics can be time-consuming, but the AI Design Assistant simplifies the process. Under Assessment Settings, navigate to Rubrics and click on Add a Grading Rubric. Enter the description, select the rubric type (percentage, percentage range, points, or points range), number of columns, and number of rows, then click Generate. You can then edit the rubric to your specific needs.
Streamlining Test Question and Question Bank Creation
The AI Design Assistant can quickly create test questions and question banks. To create AI-generated test questions, select Test from the Create Content menu, then Auto-generate question. Define the details of the questions, including the question type (Essay, Fill in the Blank, Matching, Multiple Choice, or True/False). After the questions have been generated, select the ones you want to add to the test. You can also define questions for your question bank, including a thorough description, question type, complexity, and number of questions.
Generating Journals
You can also create AI-generated journals using the AI Design Assistant. Provide a description, set the desired cognitive level, and define the complexity to create the Journal.
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Designing Visually Appealing Layouts
The AI Design Assistant can design attractive layouts for documents that include images, knowledge checks, and helpful headings. You control whether the AI Design Assistant includes images, and you can use stock images from Unsplash or generate images.
Using AI-Generated Images
You can directly insert images from AI or stock images from Unsplash into the text editor by clicking the Image button and selecting Unsplash or Generate Images. Remember to add alt text for accessibility.
Creating AI Conversations
You can create AI Conversations around a topic or scenario to engage your students. Follow the steps to create the activity’s Content and then choose the Settings.
How to use the AI Design Assistant tool
To begin creating your AI-generated content, you will need to add a description. Providing the AI Design Assistant with a detailed description, including your objectives, is imperative and will assist the AI Design Assistant with creating the appropriate content. Note: If your course already contains content, you can find the Auto-Generate Modules option in the Create Item menu. Once selected, begin building your course content. On the next page, you can set up your AI-generated module.
Ensuring Accessibility: Meeting WCAG 2.1AA Standards
Recent legislation mandates that all digital content meet Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1AA (WCAG 2.1AA). This ensures equitable access to course learning materials for all learners, regardless of disability status.
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Proactive Accessibility Measures
The best way to ensure your course is accessible is to be proactive. Check file accessibility as you develop or curate learning materials using accessibility checkers built into programs like Microsoft Office.
Key Accessibility Considerations
- Captions and Transcripts: Ensure your live webinar tools support captions. All pre-recorded material should include captions and transcripts.
- Alternative Text for Images: Ensure that all images include alternative text (alt text). When using images in test questions, providing accurate and meaningful alt text is essential.
- Document Formats: It’s easier to fix PDF accessibility in their original source format, such as Microsoft Word. Consider uploading Word Documents over PDFs. Avoid uploading scanned documents or handwritten notes.
Accessing Resources Through Interlibrary Loan
If you need to access an article or book chapter that isn't readily available, UAMS offers an Interlibrary Loan service.
Requesting Materials
If you find an article or book chapter in a database and want to access the full text, click on the Check for UAMS full text icon. *Note: This link appears as "Check for UAMS full text" in PubMed. If the next screen does not show an option for "Full text online," then you should see a screen that says "Sorry this item is not available online" and a link saying Request via Interlibrary Loan.
Important Note for UAMS/ACH Affiliates
If you are UAMS faculty, staff, or student or from ACH, you do not have to fill in any information in the "Add Account" section of your ILL screen.
Evaluating Journal Quality with Web of Science
Web of Science is a valuable tool for assessing the quality and impact of a journal. Next to search results in Web of Science, look to the right of a citation. This tool can be helpful not only for finding out how many times an article has been cited but also to discover articles on the same topic.
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