Edmund Cannon

Using Blackboard to accompany lectures

An unfashionable view of teaching technology2

3 Fundamental issues

Officially we are meant to assess learning

outcomes. But the official position evaporates

when failure rates are high.

To what extent should students take responsibility

for their own learning: is education

productivity enhancement;

enabling students to achieve autonomous ability;

pure signalling?

Heterogeneity of students.

4 Blackboard for lecture notes

Lecture notes augment and improve lectures:Filling in gaps, avoiding mistakes in notes;Allow students to listen to the lecture;Especially helpful for some students (dyslexic, etc).

Disadvantages:Students become more passive (affects kinetic learning, handwriting skills);Powerpoint displaces Word;Students stay in bed

Lose benefits of the lectureDon’t read the notes anyway (procrastination)

5 A semi-controlled experiment

Compare two years of students. No difference in

timetable for unit under discussion; virtually no

change in anything else.

Compare second and fourth year that a unit ran.

Same textbook, exam structure, mode of delivery,

…

Two differences:

Larger year group (180 versus 130)

Powerpoint slides placed on BB after or before

lecture

6 What happened?

Lecture attendance fell from 65% to 38%

Failure rate rose from 15% to 22% (later adjusted

to 20%)

Proportion of firsts rose from 15% to 20%

7 Is it possible to identify the effects?

Even if putting powerpoint slides on BB is the only

treatment effect then we cannot identify this from

the selection effect.

Using detailed data on the 2007 cohort, the

strength of correlation between lecture attendance,

BB usage and marks suggests an effect of 3 marks

– but this may be entirely a selection effect.

8 Questions

In the lecture: powerpoint versus chalk

On BB: powerpoint versus Word

Lecture attendance:

Does it matter

Should we do anything about it (hand holding?)