www.le.ac.uk

Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed - Are We Blue?

Nichola HayesEducational DesignerCourse Design and Development UnitUniversity of Leicester

VLE Back Story

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VLE Back Story

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Stick or Twist

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Our Approach: Evidence, Evidence, Evidence

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Our Approach: evidence, evidence, evidence

• Server logs to quantify the usage of particular tools.

• An online questionnaire to all staff (academic, administrative and central support), which explored VLE use, attitudes, needs and challenges. (262 staff responded).

• Interviews with all 32 academic departments and student-facing central services.

• A focus group involving a representative sample of students from 13 departments.

Project Oscars – the people who made it possible

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Staff Survey - Respondents by job role (n=262)

52.7%

25.6%

11.5%

2.7% 7.6%

Academic staff

Professional/administrative staff

Academic-related staff

Teaching assistant/postgraduate

Other

Staff Survey Results

• Dissatisfaction with Blackboard.

• Blackboard used as a content repository.

• Standardised templates that allow flexibility welcomed by the majority.

• Centrally provided extra help required for any Bb upgrade fall-out and moving to a template.

Staff Survey Results

Student Focus Group Questions

• Q1. What role does Blackboard currently play in your course?

• Q2. Is it easy to access course materials on Blackboard currently?

• Q3. What do you find most difficult to use in Blackboard?

• Q4. Where and when do you need to/would you like access to course materials?

• Q5. What sort of materials would you ideally like?

• Q7. If you could design an ideal VLE – what would it look like?

Student Focus Group

Q7. If you could design an ideal VLE – what would it look like?

• Keep it simple

• Bb Home page for your department, should be cleaner, with ‘button’ links to DISCUSSION BOARDS, YOUR GRADES, MATERIALS, ASSESSMENT, SEARCH, CAREERS, DEPARTMENT NEWS

• Notifications should use colours to highlight new information or updated information.

• Use shorter file names

• Timetable

• Link to library and notification of when books are due back

• Pre-populate address book with relevant students and staff

Blackboard Audit• Upgrade Considerations • Blackboard roles within the department• Usability and fit for purpose• Navigation/organisation and templates• L&T tools • Site administration• Assessment and Feedback• Support and Training

Blackboard Audit Results• July best month for downtime• Difficult time of year – Start of year and semesters• Demanding tasks – Enrolling students Deleting students/instructors from previous cohorts/years Uploading multiple documents on a one-by-one basis Adaptive release• Navigation - Not user-friendly (too many clicks, frustrating…)• Templates - Would like templates with ability to personalise/adapt• L&T tools outside of Bb – large percentage are and favourites were Google

tools (Plus, Docs, tools), specialised tools (geological mining software), Facebook, WordPress, Screen Capture, Twitter etc.)

• Academic staff and module convenors doing as much administration as the administrators (blurred roles)

• Training - Current style of training is not useful or staff do not have time to attend. Key question(s) – What is Blackboard for? What can we do with it? How do we enhance the experience? What training is available? Discipline specific training

Project Outcomes

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Upgrade to Bb 9.1 SP8

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Move to Managed Hosting

Mobile App. and Bb Mobile Learn

VLE Policy & Guidance Document

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Default View – our approach

• Task and finish Group

• Paper Prototyping

• Student Focus Group

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Communication

• Online Help resources: go.le.ac.uk/blackboardhelp

• Access from Help page in Blackboard

Support Resources

Dedicate Migration Support Team

Learning Objectshttp://preview.tinyurl.com/ckxq2lk

Podcasts

http://preview.tinyurl.com/coqov4c

Blogs

http://preview.tinyurl.com/ckf9ptn

Wikis

SITS integration

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VLE re-launch part II

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Are We Blue?

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Questions

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