Why did you choose to use Blackboard? How have you integrated the technology into your teaching?

I took over a course from another instructor, and the entire course was on Blackboard. Because of time constraints, it seemed easier to continue developing and conducting the course on Blackboard. But then I began to really like some of its features, and I started to use it in all my other courses.

I use Blackboard as a course management tool for all my graduate-level classes, on campus or online. I also use it as a research tool for data collection and analysis. Each of my courses has its own website outside Blackboard, which provides course materials and information that can be easily accessed. Blackboard then comes in as a space/tool for sharing additional course documents, conducting asynchronous discussions, engaging in team work, and submitting/grading homework.

How is your use of the technology innovative or different?

I had some reservations about Blackboard when I first used it. The boxed-in interface did not appeal to me. But there are several powerful tools that nicely support document sharing, homework submission, and grade management. Also, we can customize the buttons to make it suitable for individual courses. As an instructor, I can put up a course from scratch within a reasonable time frame, without having to worry about technical difficulties. I can also change things upon student request without creating confusion. It does allow the course to be more user-friendly and student-centered. In addition, Blackboard helped me better integrate teaching and research. I design the courses not only to meet student needs, but also to collect data. Since research results are often used to improve teaching, the two purposes align very well. I was able to use many of the qualitative and quantitative data captured in Blackboard for document and statistical analysis.

What parts of Blackboard have worked the best for you?

Overall, Blackboard works well for online students. Ed Tech students are normally busy professionals, who live all over the globe and are often on the road. Blackboard (instead of their overloaded email box) becomes a virtual space that they tune into for updates, learning materials, and interactions. The teamwork space, in particular, works very well for project-oriented online classes. Groups can post their discussions, meeting minutes, and solo or team products in a way that is easy for me to access and comment on. These features have increased the visibility of online students and their communications. The Assignments feature is successful as well. Students are able to read assignment requirements, access examples, complete their work, and upload their work all at one spot. I can then download all submissions through the gradebook and upload comments for each individual.

What features of Blackboard haven't worked for you?

The discussion board! It has not been a motivating tool. Students in all my classes did not feel eager to use it; posting for the discussion thread seemed to be more of a task for them. The online ones preferred live chat rather than asynchronous dialogue. In addition, the assignment tool can be a bit buggy at times. For example, it does not allow me to download the entire submission if one student did not submit their work correctly. Also, I was not able to access blackboard.sdsu.edu while traveling in China. There seem to be some restrictions on our side. Most importantly, Blackboard needs to look into developing powerful features similar to the several emerging social software, Blogs (blogger.com), Moodle (http://moodle.com/), and Wiki. These tools allow students to publish journals, thoughts, and ideas instantly on the web with a few mouse clicks. They also enable authors to express themselves freely and spontaneously while interacting with a large audience, which appears to be a strong motivator. These software programs also inform students of new posts within a community. Blackboard needs to catch up with the trend, developing more powerful communication tools that can support larger-scope online socializing. These tools can facilitate the forming of online communities where students not only share their work, but also life experiences and individual concerns.

How has Blackboard changed the way you teach and manage a classroom? And how has it improved your students' ability to communicate and learn?

Students feel more organized; it’s easy to access and share documents and easy to receive feedback on their homework. They can also compare their performance with the rest of the class, which encourages self-regulated learning. I do feel more organized! The Digital Dropbox and Assignment tools helped me save lots of hard drive space. Communication has definitely improved! Blackboard reduces my email traffic. Students can easily email each other, and I can easily email the class without going through a listserv. The teamwork space also increased the visibility of team communication and their thinking process as well. Blackboard also has a great data-capturing system, which enables me to conduct action research. I was able to view and download course usage (individuals and the entire class), frequencies of material access, and download the discussion transcripts. I just finished a paper called “Correlational Analysis of Student Visibility and Performance in Online Learning.” This paper (publishing in process) would not be possible without the Blackboard data. It feels great to be able to teach and research at the same time.