To briefly revisit the technical specifications to our particular implementation of Blackboard, we installed the Enterprise Edition of the Blackboard Learning System 5.6 running under the Microsoft Advanced Server Operating System, with an SQL Server 2000 back-end database. We fully integrated and automated our data imports using the Blackboard snapshot process...
One of the ‘unwritten duties’ of the Bb Administrator is keeping an eye on course sites and ensuring that there are no slip-ups, rogue sites, unwanted duplicate sites, abandoned sites etc.etc. On Bb installations with many hundreds of courses, instances of these anomalies can appear on even the most rigourously administered systems...
City of Sunderland College became a Blackboard user in December 2000. In this interview Ian Todd, Principal of the College, discusses some of the strategic considerations of implementing a VLE...
Middlesbrough College were inspected in November 2003 and the report was published in March 2004. In November 2003 the college was just getting into its stride with its first year on Blackboard. We had about 350 active courses, a large Learning Resources 'course site' and a Student Services 'course site'.
‘Champions’, ‘pioneers’ .. the words convey something of the frontier spirit that has symbolised the growth of eLearning. In the UK the government’s ‘Information and Learning Technology (ILT) champions ’initiative proved very successful in raising the awareness of the role that ICT could play in teaching and learning...
One question that has nagged at us since we started the VLE route is how to not only make it usable but also to have a strong ‘repetition factor’, so that students and staff would want to come back to it. It has challenged our way of seeing what learning was about and trying to achieve this has been a large factor in each of the courses we have run...
The role of the learning technologist is vital to the success of e-learning. Our work which brings together pedagogy and technology ensures that many innovative projects enhance learning and teaching...
The Belfast Institute’s staff development service has been keen to ensure all staff are comfortable with new technologies to remove barriers to learning. The use of Blackboard has been a strategic tool in helping to achieve this. We accept the premise that staff can be helped to grasp such benefits if they can also experience Blackboard from a student’s perspective...
Building a Bb initiative in your educational community is an evolving process. Cultivating a Best Practices sharing environment assists with imbedding and integrating the use of Bb tools into the instructional process. Embracing the Best Practices forum stimulates dialogue between faculty, for enhancing the teaching and learning process. Another benefit is promoting the use of technology tools in an educational community. Thus, Best Practices indicates progression along a continuum of using Bb tools, toward building a community of collaboration. So how do you define this process in action?...
The following article is the first in a series of three from Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore. This first one outlines the steps taken by NTU to introduce e-Learning as an institutional strategy and, in June, NTU’s developments in media rich on-line teaching will be explored. Finally, in August, the results of a university wide survey will be discussed which provides valuable insight into the learners’ experience of a full-scale e-Learning adoption and the pointers this gives for future development...
With the National Learning Network (NLN) materials now available to Further Education Colleges, Specialist Colleges and Adult and Community Learning, identifying suitable content for Blackboard should now be much more straight-forward. We have approximately 600 hours of interactive, engaging learning material covering 21 subject areas from which to draw learning material, including some generic material that can be used in a variety of contexts.
However, for most of us that isn’t the end of the story…
A major study of learning styles and their implications for pedagogy is currently being led by Professor Frank Coffield and his team at Newcastle University. Commenting on the findings of the research to date Coffield writes...
Students on Built Environment programmes are supported using blended learning techniques at Belfast Institute. Those supported include students on programmes such as HNC and NC Estate Management, HNC Building and HNC and NC Town Planning. They attend the Institute one day per week based on a traditional “day release” structure but the students on these courses are, for a large part, however geographically dispersed across Northern Ireland and often tend to be out on site during their working week. This can make telephone contact outside college time with a tutor difficult...
One of the main disabilities that we see in further education colleges is dyslexia; mild, moderate and severe. Often students arrive at our doors knowing only that they had some difficulties in school. Some then go on to have a dyslexia assessment as part of the college initial screening process. The difficulties they have might include some or all from the checklist below...
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