FREE workshops offered
Faculty who are not familiar with Trent’s new learning system, Blackboard Learn 9, may find themselves scrambling to prepare for their courses in September.
“Blackboard Learn 9 is very, very different from the WebCT Learning System that we've been using for the past six years,” says Mary-Jane Pilgrim, instructional technology specialist with Trent’s Information Technology Department. “The interface is more intuitive, updated, slick and clean. It will be more powerful and expandable in the long run, but does require that some investment of time be made now to reach a level of comfort with its design and use.”
Blackboard Learn 9 is an internet tool for course content delivery and management. The system provides instructors and students with secure, course-specific, 24/7 access to course materials, communication tools and assessment tools. Features of the new system include:
A Course Home page where students and instructors can get up-to-date information about everything that is happening in their courses.
- Drag and Drop and Inline Editing that allows users to easily arrange and customize course menus and content.
- A Redesigned Grade Center that makes grading easier for instructors with features such as adding your own calculated grade columns, viewing grade history, and viewing student grades based on your selected criteria.
- Collaborative Learning such as wikis for collaboration and group projects, and improved blog and journal tools, where individual student contributions can be tracked and graded accordingly.
- Blackboard Mashups that allows Web 2.0 content to be easily integrated from YouTube,
Flickr, and Slideshare .
Over the summer, Information Technology staff completed the migration of course content from WebCT/Blackboard to the new system. The WebCT/Blackboard learning system will be out of active service by October, 2012.
Student access to the new Blackboard Learn 9 began on August 13th. EDUC students will be able to see their credit courses for the fall term on August 22nd. All other students will be able to see their fall and fall/winter term credit courses on September 1st.
To ease the transition for faculty to Blackboard Learn 9, a schedule of seventeen different FREE workshops has been developed on a wide variety of topics including Assessments, Gradebook, Rubrics, Adaptive Release, and posting content. The workshops will be extended through the fall term, provided there is enough interest. There are also "mini sessions" on very specific topics and a regular drop-in for anyone who needs specific help.
Faculty who will be using the learning system are encouraged to attend at least one workshop, especially “Getting Started with Blackboard 9.1. You can view the workshop schedule and register for sessions at: http://www.trentu.ca/it/learningsystem/workshops.php.
Ms. Pilgrim reminds faculty who will be using Blackboard Learn 9 to become familiar with the system before the fall term starts in order to properly prepare for their courses. “Everyone should take advantage of learning opportunities, now, before the crazy time begins,” said Ms. Pilgrim. “The demands on my team for training and assistance are hitting a maximum level. By September, we will only be able to assist people as time allows.”
Posted on Friday, August 17, 2012.