Tips for Using Blackboard to Support On-Campus Instruction

Marty Brooks and Mary Downing

Start Slow and Simple

Use Bb to post what you already are doing

Announcements

Gradebook

Course Materials or Documents

Managing Papers1) Discussion Board

• Benefits of Db include: 1) It’s green 2) All student work is located in a single place 3) Easy to facilitate online peer reviews 4) Indelible Time Stamp

Managing Papers2) Safe Assign

• Benefits include: Automatically subjects papers to plagiarism scan

Marty Cheated!

Accommodations

• Use Course Documents to post class notes for those who are visually impaired or use Wimba classroom to post notes for those who are hearing impaired. Allow students who are visually impaired to post their work into a journal.

Be Aware of the Digital Divide• Link to article from University of Oregon regarding changing meaning of “digital

divide”: http://uonews.uoregon.edu/archive/news-release/2010/4/digital-divide-changing-not-students-torn-it

• Difference between smart phone web access and personal computer: Smart phone web access is used almost exclusively for social purposes, while people with personal computers engage in more research based activities

• Innovators : brave people, pulling the change. Innovators are very important in communication

• Early adopters : respectable people, opinion leaders, try out new ideas, but in a careful way

• Early majority : Thoughtful people, careful but accepting change more quickly than the average.

• Late majority : skeptical people, will use new ideas or products only when the majority is using it

• Traditional people : caring for the ‘old’ ways, are critical towards new ideas and will only accept it if the new idea has become mainstream or even tradition.