Blackboard Workshops
Whether you’re planning to teach your course completely online or to include
online components in your regular classes, the Blackboard course management system
can provide the ingredients for a successful experience. With Blackboard, you can post
syllabus, put course materials, create online quizzes and surveys, give and accept
assignments electronically, and enter grades.
We offer five separate Blackboard workshops on a variety of topics. Each will be offered
three times this summer. Plan to take the introduction workshop first, then the workshops
can be taken in any order.
- Introduction & Grade book: May 18, July 6 & August 3
- Content Organization: May 19, July 7 & August 4
- Assignment Tool: May 20, July 8 & August 5
- Communication Tools: May 21, July 9 & August 6
- Assessment Tool: May 22, July 10 & August 7
Additionally, new to this year is a set of four advanced Blackboard workshops. These
workshops are 3 hours long, and designed for those who have a basic understanding of various
Blackboard tools.
- Advanced assessment: June 23, 9am-12pm
- Collaboration: June 23, 1-4pm
- Time-saving techniques: June 25, 9am-12pm
- Multimedia Integration: June 25, 1-4pm
Workshop Information
- Eligible participants will receive $100 stipends for each full-day workshop they
complete. Sorry, we cannot offer stipends for advanced workshops. Reminder: To conserve
our resources, each faculty member is limited to five stipends over the course of
the summer.
- All workshops will be held in the ITDC Building (301 S. Main St.), unless specified on the
Schedule below.
- All basic workshops run from 9 a.m. - 3 p.m. and advanced workshops are either
morning (9am-12pm) or afternoon (1-4pm).
- Morning snacks and lunch will be provided for full day workshops. Enjoy the company
of your colleagues from across campus while you eat.
Eligibility and Registration Information
All tenured, tenure-track, and full-time non-tenure track faculty and staff with teaching
responsibilities are eligible to register and to receive stipends. Part-time NTT instructors
and graduate students are eligible to register and will be admitted as space allows,
but they are not eligible for stipends.
Click here to register!
When you see a “Waiting List Open” message for a workshop, go ahead and register
using the link above. You will be placed on the waiting list and we'll get back to
you as soon as space becomes available. We're constantly updating the participant list
in order to accommodate as many faculty as possible. Thank you.
Schedule
Blackboard Workshops: Session 1
Location: COB 22E
Blackboard Workshops: Session 2
Blackboard Workshops: Session 3
Location: COB 22G
Blackboard Workshops: Advanced Sessions
Workshop Descriptions
- Blackboard: Introduction and Grade book (1
day)
- This workshop provides an introduction to Blackboard and an overview of its various
instructional components. Whether you’ve used Blackboard or WebCT in the past
or you’re new to course management systems, we strongly encourage you to register
for this workshop before taking any others in the series. You will create and begin
to develop your Blackboard course. You will also learn how to manage your students
and the Grade Book.
- Blackboard: Content & Organization (1
day)
- Blackboard allows you to organize your materials and activities in many different
ways. We’ll show you how to set up learning modules, create folders, and create
content links. We’ll discuss the benefits of different options and help you
choose the best way to present content for your particular course. Additionally,
we’ll discuss how to take advantage of the selective release tool for your
course content.
- Blackboard: Assignment Tool (1
day)
- Blackboard’s Assignment Tool allows you to create and distribute course assignments
to your students, including assignment-related files such as photographs, spreadsheets,
or articles. Students can upload completed assignments for the instructor to evaluate,
and assignment grades can be posted automatically to the Grade Book. We will also
discuss the Group Manager tool that allows you to create groups for group assignments
and discussions and the Grading Form that can be used to evaluate assignments.
- Blackboard: Communication Tools (1
day)
- Blackboard has many features that help enhance communication between students and
instructors and among students. We will show you some of these tools, including
announcements, discussion boards, email, the whiteboard, the chat feature, and more.
These functions can be used to supplement activities for your regular courses. For
online courses, these functions are essential for good learning experiences. We
will discuss how communication tools work and how to integrate them into your online,
blended and face-to-face courses.
- Blackboard: Assessment Tool (1
day)
- Blackboard contains fairly comprehensive quiz, self-test and survey capabilities
that allow you to assess student progress or get feedback from students. Several
question types are available, including multiple choice, matching, fill-in-the-blank,
short answer, and calculated. This workshop will show you how to create and manage
the Question Database and how to create and manage quizzes, self-tests, and surveys.
Blackboard: Advanced
Assessment (3 hrs.)- Are you ready to move on to the next step in Blackboard Assessment? Are you interested
in learning more about how you can use Blackboard's grading forms not only to improve
the consistency and speed with which you can provide students feedback but to track
trends within your course? Would you like to learn more about the Assessment tool
reports and what you can do with them? If you answered "YES" to these
questions, then this workshop is for you! This workshop is rated "I" for
Intermediate -- You will need to have prior Blackboard Assessment Tool experience
in order to get the most from this workshop!
- Blackboard: Collaboration (3
hrs.)
- Blackboard can be used to facilitate collaboration among students in many different
ways. This workshop will explore some of these methods in more depth, including
the Group Manager, group assignments, and blogs & journals. We will also discuss
the ramifications of creating group activities for the gradebook.
- Blackboard: Time-saving
Techniques (3
hrs.)
- Are you having trouble effectively reigning in the time it's taking you to facilitate
your online course? If so, this workshop may be just what you need to take back
control of your time. In this workshop we'll explore strategies and tools that you
can use to reduce the amount of time you spend on communication activities (by far
the largest time consumer reported by online faculty) - without diminishing the
quality of your student interactions. This workshop is rated "E" for everyone,
though basic knowledge of Blackboard will be helpful for implementing some of the
strategies.
- Blackboard: Multimedia
Integration (3 hrs.)
- Adding multimedia presentation to a Blackboard course may stimulate students' intellectual
curiosity, help them engage with the course activities and/or create additional "instructor's
presence." It is, however, challenging sometimes as there are some technical
hoops that you may have to overcome. In this workshop, we will discuss a variety
of options that you can make multimedia content available in Blackboard courses.
