Teaching with Blackboard

Beginning Blackboard:

• Tour of Blackboard and 20 Gotchas
  (Based on the Student Orientation to Blackboard)
• How to Use Blackboard to Communicate with your Students
• How to Use Blackboard to Help Your Learners Get Access to Learning Materials
• How to Use Blackboard to Assess Your Students' Learning and Provide Helpful Feedback
• How to Use Blackboard to Track Learner Progress

For people who have some experience with Blackboard and wish to explore their issues:

• Ten Blackboard Issues

For people who are not course developers, but who need to know about Blackboard and the processes that load students, teachers and courses into Blackboard.

• Blackboard for Staff (PowerPoint)

These materials are a Blackboard course, Teaching with Blackboard,   on the Blackboard 5.0 server.  

To participate in the "Teaching with  Blackboard" training sessions, please contact
Mathana Sentilnathan

You also may wish to review

• Developing Online Courses using Blackboard -- support for the development of online courses for your department (see, for example, "Training Instructors to Teach Online", NISOD Training Abstracts, Volume XXII, Number 20)

A Tour of Blackboard

Take a quick tour of the Blackboard 5.0 course management system, which is currently being used by over 150 of your colleagues at Algonquin.

Blackboard eases publication of course materials to the web, helps create and deliver online testing and helps you promote student discussion. This session begins with the Orientation to Blackboard which is currently used with students at the College and introduces you to the use of the Blackboard Control Panel which instructors use to create their own Blackboard courses.

The Student Orientation to Blackboard, called "Getting Started with Blackboard", is online on the Blackboard 5.0 server.  A copy of this course that is accessible to teachers is in the Teaching with Blackboard Course: login using visitor as both the username and password and you can view this material.

Documents posted to this website:

• Tour of Blackboard Handout (Crib Notes) and 20 Gotchas (Rich Text Format)
• Tour of Blackboard PowerPoint
• Creating a Student Persona PowerPoint
• HTML in Blackboard PowerPoint

How to Use Blackboard to Communicate with your Students

The research is clear, students who interact with their teacher, with each other and with course materials are more likely to be successful. In this module you will learn how you can use Blackboard features to save you time and trouble as you communicate with your students. You will also learn how you can provide opportunities for them to interact with each other.

More specifically you will learn how to use Blackboard to

• provide announcements for the entire class or for groups of learners within the class
• send email messages to individuals, groups or the entire class
• reinforce your expectations and help learners to manage their time by using the course calendar and task list
• post information about the course
• help students to interact with each other in threaded discussions

Documents posted to this website:

• Using Blackboard to Communicate with your Learners (PowerPoint)
• Learning Activities to Support this module (Word Perfect)

How to Use Blackboard to Help Your Learners Get Access to Learning Materials

• Take a virtual field trip

• Read a journal article online

• Download a handout

• Discover resources for your subject in an electronic data base

These are just some examples of the kinds of learning resources that you can, quite easily, make available to your students within the Blackboard learning platform.

More specifically you will...

• learn how to create and post materials to support classroom learning
• discuss the implications for face-to-face learning when class notes are posted
• learn how to provide notes and handouts using PDF files and web-sites
• discover how to link to external resource materials
• identify useful links to College resources
  

Materials on the website include

• Learning Objectives for this Module (Word Document)
• How to Use Blackboard to Help Your Learners Get Access to Learning Materials (PowerPoint)
• Learning Activities for Module 3 (Rich Text Format Document)
• The Blackboard Resource Center (Word Document)
• Importing Previously Created Files into Blackboard (Word Document)
• Testimonials (Word Document)
• Creating Content Directly into Blackboard (Word Document)

   

How to Use Blackboard to Assess Your Students' Learning and Provide Helpful Feedback

Have you ever...

• had a student hand you an assignment in the hall between classes and then wondered what file you'd tucked it into?
• found yourself on a sunny Saturday afternoon adding up marks?
• just finished adding the latest quiz to the pile of marking on your desk and having a student ask "Have you marked my test yet?".
• wished you could be a "fly on the wall" at a group meeting so you could see whether the group was "on track" with its project?
• wondered whether or not the students have understood the main ideas you have just discussed in class?

This module will show you how features in Blackboard can help with these problems. You will learn how to use Blackboard to assess your students' learning and give them timely feedback.

More specifically, in this module you will...

• explore tips for designing an effective evaluation plan for your course that can be supported with Blackboard features
• learn how to create and use quizzes for both formative (non-graded) feedback and summative (graded) evaluation
• discover Blackboard tools that will help you to facilitate group projects
• identify strategies for marking online
• learn how to use a digital drop box to collect student assignments

Documents posted to this website:

• Using Blackboard to Assess Learner Progress and Provide Useful Feedback (PowerPoint)
• Learning Activities to support this module (Word Document)
  

How to Use Blackboard to Track Learner Progress

As class sizes grow it is getting increasingly difficult to monitor student progress and identify learners who may be lagging behind or having trouble mastering course content. This module will help you to identify ways that you can use Blackboard to help both you monitor student progress.

More specifically, you will learn how to:

• manage marks with a spread sheet
• provide learners with an ongoing record of their marks
• monitor group work and online discussions
• use stats functions for pages and learners
• set up and monitor the task list

Materials available on this website:

• Tracking Learner Progress PowerPoint
• Learning Activities to support this module (WordPerfect)

To participate in the "Beginning Blackboard" training, please contact  Mathana Sentilnathan.

This page is supported by Learning and Teaching Services, Algonquin College
We are located inside the Learning Resource Centre at Woodroffe Campus.
Page updated 2002-12-06
Copyright © Algonquin College 2001, 2002