The more things change, the more they stay the same!

Desire2Learn Learning Suite v.10 has many enhanced features that will provide a highly customizable learning environment for our students. However, there are several tools within D2L that function very similarly to what you are used to in Blackboard/WebCT – they just have different names. 

The “Dropbox” tool in D2L may remind you of “Assignments” in WebCT. The Dropbox tool allows students to electronically submit individual and group assignments for a course. The Dropbox tool allows you to see assignment submission times, view submissions with the document viewer on the Leave Feedback page, download assignments to your computer, associate dropbox folders to rubrics, and return submissions with grades and feedback. 

Watch a short demo on Dropbox here: http://www.desire2learn.com/resources/video/view/?v=11 

The “News” tool in D2L is similar to “Announcements” in WebCT.  Use “News” to quickly and effectively communicate updates and new information to your students. Students can even opt to receive News and other notifications as text messages on their mobile phones. 

Learn more about D2L communication features here: http://www.desire2learn.com/products/learning-environment/features/collaborate-communicate/ 

This PDF document makes some additional associations between WebCT and D2L tools.

Which will you use in your course?

Looking Beyond Blackboard CE8

The version of Blackboard that we currently use, CE8 (formerly WebCT), will no longer be supported by Blackboard as of January 2013. This presents both a problem and an opportunity for National-Louis University. The problem is of course that we are faced with moving to another system – an experience that is still quite fresh in our minds having completed the move from WebCT 4 just over two years ago. But the opportunities this necessary change presents go far beyond having a new tool with improved features and capabilities. This is an opportunity to reflect on the way we currently use our learning management system (LMS), to examine the tools we have chosen to support online learning, and to improve on that in the future.

The next iteration of Blackboard, called “Learn”, is quite different from CE8. It’s not an upgrade for us; it’s a move to an entirely different system that will have some similarity to CE8. Keeping our existing courses will involve “migrating” them, and getting faculty and students familiar with the new system will involve extensive planning and training. In light of this, I asked the faculty and administration at NLU this question:

“Do we want to continue our relationship with Blackboard, Inc and move to Blackboard Learn? Or, do we want to explore other LMS options along with Blackboard Learn?”

We chose to explore our options.

Under the guidance of the Senate Academic Technology Committee, I have convened a group of faculty and administration with representation across colleges and the library. This “LMS Task Force” is taking on the work of examining our current satisfaction with Blackboard and looking to the future to determine what LMS will present us with the best combination of tools, features, and support to ensure the success of NLU’s online and blended courses.

Hoping to make a recomendation in early 2011, we have set an aggressive timeline that involves focus groups and individual interviews, surveys, LMS test-drives, cost-analysis, and conversations with other SunGard institutions. We plan to draw ideas from our own pool of innovative faculty who have been leading the online vision at NLU, to research the direction of tools that support online learning through esteemed organizations such as EDUCAUSE and Sloan-C, and to use our significant resources available through SunGard Higher Education to recommend a solution that will support the efforts of administration and faculty at NLU and contribute to an improved student experience.

For more information and updates on the project, visit http://www.nl.edu/lmstaskforce.

Cross-Listing: An Explanation

What is Cross-listing?

“…Cross-listing does not delete any content.  When two courses are cross-listed, a third “parent” course shell is created.  The other two continue to exist with any assigned content remaining there. 

But any student or instructor trying to access the original two courses is automatically forwarded into the new, blank parent shell.  The appearance is that content is lost, but it is not.  If the instructor wants to use content created before the cross-listing occurred, they just need to copy it into the new parent shell.”

Michelle Goedders, 4/05/2010

When is cross-listing used?

Faculty who want to combine one or more sections of a class.

How long does it take?

Usually about 24 hours

What is the process?

College admins create the cross-listing in Banner, which generates a third “Parent” course in Blackboard.  Then the faculty can copy content into this “parent” course.

Using Online Course Tools to Achieve Chickering and Gamson's Principles of Good Practice

In order to help faculty prepare to continue face-to-face classes online during an emergency flu situation, OIT Academic Computing recently offered some training sessions on the Luminis Course Studio tools. Yet what I know about people and technology adoption is that they are not likely to start using a new technology for preventative purposes. People are more likely to start using something new if they can see some immediate value in it. It occurred to me that there is much everyday practical and pedagogical value in using the Luminis Course Studio tools, or Blackboard, to support a face-to-face class; and that faculty may be more attracted to using these tools if they were aware of the everyday advantages.

I wanted to use the renewed interest in Luminis Course Studio, peaked by H1N1 concerns, to share the everyday advantages. When listing the advantages, I was reminded of Chickering and Gamson’s Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education. Using either Luminis or Blackboard provides several means for faculty to apply these principles to their course.

Chickering and Gamson propose that these seven principles can improve teaching and learning:

1. Encourages Contact Between Students and Faculty – The communication tools (email, chat, discussion) can help facilitate out-of-class contact between faculty and students. This is good for the student, who can ask for help outside of office hours. Also good for faculty, who can respond at his/her convenience.

2. Develops Reciprocity and Communication Between Students – Discussion and message boards are great for this purpose. Students can post thoughts and questions about the course or the content. Other students can respond and answer questions. This type of student collaboration is easily achieved with a discussion board topic dedicated to student questions (often called a Student Café topic) and enhances learning and feelings of connectedness.

3. Encourages Active Learning – students learn more when they can discuss what they are learning, relate it to their lives, and/or write about it. Again, online discussion boards provide a way to continue active learning outside of class time. Providing web resources and URLs also provide a way for students’ to investigate topics outside of class.

4. Gives Prompt Feedback – Using the online gradebook in Blackboard will help you regularly communicate your students’ progress to them. I’ve been in several online courses where I’ve been able to post portions of my assignments before the due date to receive feedback from the instructor and other students. It’s extremely helpful and empowering. Discussion boards and blogs also allow students to reflect on their learning: self-feedback. Online quizzes (for grade or just for practice) are another way to build a continuum of assessment in your course and to allow students to gauge their progress.

5. Emphasizes Time on Task – The announcements tools in Blackboard and Luminis can allow you to spend more class time on material. Save class announcements, schedule changes, due-date reminders and other administrative business for online announcements so that you can get down to business right at the start of class. Use the discussion board to address frequently asked questions rather than spending class time or answering multiple times for multiple students.

6. Communicates High Expectations – I can’t think of any specific tool in Luminis or Blackboard designed to help you achieve this. Perhaps the rubric tool, or attaching goals to online content.

7. Respects Diverse Talents and Ways of Learning – Students may benefit from viewing your slides a second time. Others may appreciate that you posted visuals or transcripts of your lecture online. Shy or thoughtful students may be more active in an online discussion than in a face-to-face discussion.

If I still haven’t sold you on using an online tool to support your course… consider how posting all your paper materials online in digital form will reduce the weight of your bag. And result in more trees and fewer paper cuts!

Blackboard Scholar

Our upgrade to Blackboard CE8 introduces a new tool, Blackboard Scholar. Scholar is a social bookmarking tool that is available to all Blackboard account holders. For us, that means all faculty and students can create a Scholar account. That account can be maintained even after an individual has graduated or otherwise left the NLU community.

For those of you unfamiliar with social bookmarking, I suggest that you read up about it here or listen to this OIT podcast.

For those of you already familiar with the practice of social bookmarking, you may be curious about whether you should use Scholar for your classes or continue to use whatever free service- such as Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, or Furl –that you are already using. Here are my thoughts on the subject:

First, I am thrilled to see a Web 2.0 technology incorporated into our course management system. I think this shows how important Web 2.0 tools are becoming in education and is a small preview of more collaboration tools that will be a part of Blackboard in the future.

Scholar has all of the features that you would expect from a social bookmarking tool: tagging, building relationships, RSS feeds, import and export, tag clouds and browser buttons for easy bookmarking. It is just more geared towards education and offers ways of tagging and searching for items in particular disciplines and from a pre-populated list of your courses.

One of the biggest advantages to using Scholar would be that it is now part of our online learning tool. I believe that this will help legitimize the use of social bBookmarking in Education for both faculty and students. Also, the tool is right there and accessible through Blackboard. If social bookmarking sees more adoption at NLU, it would be much more convenient for a student if they keep all of their bookmarks for all of their courses in Scholar rather than across multiple social bookmarking tools.

A huge, huge downside to using Scholar is that Scholar accounts are only available to Blackboard users. For a tool that’s usefulness and power lies in the number of its users creating and sharing bookmarks, limiting the tools user population is a drawback. This may improve if Scholar becomes a popular tool and if faculty use it for their personal and professional bookmarking, and if students use it beyond college and into their own professional lives.

Scholar does not have all the features of Delicious or Furl. It’s not as powerful and does not have nearly as many users. But for those just seeking to dip their toes into social bookmarking, it would be a good jumping off place and a way to explore how other students and faculty make use of social bookmarking.

If you would like to learn more about Scholar and Social Bookmarking in education, view the Resources for Social Bookmarking on the top right of this page. You can learn more about Scholar there too.

If you have thoughts or comments about these tools, please leave a comment for this blog post.

SafeAssign Plagiarism Prevention Tool Available

Some of you may be familiar with MyDropBox which was a plagiarism prevention tool provided by the library. Faculty and students could create an account on the MyDropBox website and then submit papers and check them for originality against a database of billions of documents, scholarly works, articles, and other submitted papers.

MyDropBox was purchased by Blackboard, and our ability to renew our license with the MyDropBox website effective August 1, 2008. MyDropBox is now only available under it's new name, SafeAssign, from within a Blackboard course.

Good thing we use Blackboard!

We sucessfully installed SafeAssign into our current Blackboard LMS system this past maintenance weekend. We've been trying it out so that we can understand how it works. We will soon announce this new tool to the entire campus, add use of SafeAssign to our Blackboard training, and provide tutorials and documentation for those wishing to use it.

Any faculty member wishing to use SafeAssign will have to have a Blackboard course shell for thier course. Faculty cannot gain access to a Blackboard course shell until they have been trained, so please plan accordingly. (Blackboard training is offered online and face:face throughout the year.) For those of you already familiar with Blackboard CE6, there are two ways to submit papers. You can either submit them yourself (in bulk!!) or create a SafeAssignment for students to submit their own papers to. There is also a draft option so that students can check thier papers for originality and make corrections before submitting the final product. I think this tool will be equally as useful for students in learning how to avoid plagiarism in their own works as it will be to help faculty detect plagiarism.

A side benefit to this development is that I have learned how to correctly spell "plagiarism"!