I gave two presentations and spoke in a panel session at the Durham Blackboard Users Conference in January 2010. As a few people have asked for access to the slides, here they are:
Blackboard 9 - Driving change, but in which direction?
During the last eight years there have been rapid development in pedagogies for online learning and the underlying technical systems to support these pedagogies. These systems have matured to form a next level environment, encapsulated in systems like Blackboard 9, and the expectations for Moodle 2.0.
Challenging experiences in deploying Blackboard 9.0 have highlighted the significant issues that these change processes are raising for our field, and fuelled concerns that central VLEs should be making way for more agile socially driven solutions. As many institutions are at the point of deciding what direction they believe will provide that next generation experience that we are all aiming for, this presentation opens the discussion about the extended issues they may face.
Teaching and assessing group skills
This presentation discussed the rise in the use of assessed group work in many disciplines within Higher Education over recent years because of efficiency gains, employability agendas and notably, the increased availability of online collaboration tools. An approach to collaboration was introduced that teaches about team work by focusing on assessment criteria and peer evaluation aspects of group working. A building block has been developed to deploy this methodology in a Blackboard environment. As well as discussing the concepts and challenges of groupwork assessment and introducing the methodology, the key features of the building block were highlighted.
The year is starting with the UK Blackboard Users Conference in Durham this week. One of the presentations I am giving is looking at change in the elearning field, what can be attributed to the release of Blackboard 9, and what institutions can learn from this period of change. Here is the abstract for my presentation:
Blackboard 9 - driving change but in which direction?
During the last eight years there have been rapid development in pedagogies for online learning and the underlying technical systems to support these pedagogies. These systems have matured to form a next level environment, encapsulated in systems like Blackboard 9, and the expectations for Moodle 2.0. These platforms have looked to bring the technologies implemented up-to-date (look and feel, underlying code, standards compliance) and to provide a sound platform to build on in the future.
However, the move to Blackboard 9 has been demanding for many institutions in many ways - bugs, stability and performance, staff training, staff engagement and expectation management to name but a few areas. These experiences have highlighted the significant issues that this change process is raising for our field, and fuelled concerns that central VLEs should be making way for more agile socially driven solutions. As many institutions are at the point of deciding what direction they believe will provide that next generation experience that we are all aiming for, there is value in discussing the extended issues they may face:
- Do we want the change we say we do?
- Are we capable of moving large scale VLEs forward?
- Are jumps away easier than jumps forward?
- How do we focus attention on learning and teaching and not the underlying technology?
- How can we manage expectations and change processes?
- Is our understanding of the elearning infrastructure at institutions the same as our users?
This talk will refer to the University of Dundee as a case study example, but will be discussing the broader conceptual and strategic direction of the field at this time. Discussion welcome.
