Blackboard SP13 Upgrade Completed

The update to 9.1 Service Pack 13 was completed over the holiday. If you encounter any problems with Blackboard Learn please log a ticket with the Blackboard Helpdesk so the issue may be investigated. If you need access to a list of what’s new in Service Pack 13, a subtab is available under the eCourses tab which contains descriptions of the new features and links to help documents and videos.

Short Courses from SoftChalk in January 2014

SoftChalk Short Courses are now available!
Do you want to learn more about specific features of SoftChalk Cloud and Create? Then these Short Courses are perfect for you! These live, one-hour webinars include a presentation and examples, as well as an opportunity for you to ask questions and receive assistance from the instructor. Click here to register!


Upcoming Short Courses in January

• An Overview of SoftChalk Cloud
• An Overview of SoftChalk Create
• TextPoppers, Images and Hyperlinks
• Navigation Features and Sidebars
• Embedded Media
• Quizzes and Quiz Groups
• Interactive Learning Activities: The Presentation Group
• Interactive Learning Activities: The Scoring Group

New Year - New Opportunities

Show your best SoftChalk lessons in the 2014 SoftChalk Challenge!

1. Use your SoftChalk Cloud account or create one for free
2. Make sure your lesson is public and published to the SoftChalk Cloud
3. Submit your Lesson to the 2014 SoftChalk Lesson Challenge!

DON'T DELAY! The submission deadline is Monday, February 24, 11:59pm EDT.

For full details on entering the 2014 Lesson Challenge and to see the winning lessons from previous years, visit the official SoftChalk Lesson Challenge site. 

Promoting Student Learning: NSSE 2012 Annual Report

Since 2000, Nessie (National Survey of Student Engagement), as the survey is known, has collected wide-ranging data to help colleges develop effective educational practices and promote engagement. Students are asked, for instance, how much time they spend studying, how often they have discussions with people of a different race or ethnicity, and how they interact with their professors and peers.

One of the findings of the survey indicated that "Freshmen reported spending, on average, 14 hours a week preparing for class, including studying, reading, writing, and doing homework or lab work. For seniors, the average was 15 hours. The exception in this year's Nessie survey was students who took all of their courses online. They spent slightly more time studying and reading relative to those who took no online classes. And online-only seniors were assigned substantially more writing over the course of the year, an average of 107 pages, compared with 75 pages for students who took courses only in person. Online students also had more favorable views of the quality of their interactions with a range of people—faculty members, academic advisers, student-services staff members—who had a hand in their learning." (Source: Chronicle of Higher Education)

For the full report: Promoting Student Learning and Institutional Improvement:Lessons from NSSE at 13 (pdf)

Article: The Impact of Online Learning on Students' Course Outcomes

The Impact of Online Learning on Students' Course Outcomes: Evidence From a Large Community and Technical College System
By: Di Xu & Shanna Smith Jaggars—Economics of Education Review, December 2013
Using an instrumental variable technique, the authors estimate the impact of online versus face-to-face course delivery on student course performance, as indicated by course persistence and final course grade. Click here for the link to the working paper.

Free Webinars from EdTechTeacher

EdTechTeacher offers free, live webinars throughout the school year aimed at helping educators integrate technology effectively in the classroom. This is a great opportunity learn something new as well as to network with other teachers from across the country and around the world.
Click on the link, EDTEchTeachers October Webinars, to register for one of the many professional development opportunities this month. The web page also provides links to archived sessions. Although many of the sessions are centered on K-12, the technology used in the classroom can certainly be applied to community colleges.

Blackboard's Inline Grading Tool for Assignments

What is Inline Assignment Grading?

Instead of requiring instructors to download student-submitted ‘assignment’ files to view or edit those submissions, instructors are now be able to view student-submitted files “inline,” i.e. in the web browser, without requiring any plugins, applets, or client-side applications. Annotation tools are included with the inline viewer, enabling you to provide feedback including comments, highlights, and even drawings/annotations directly on the inline view of the document. Supported document types that can be converted are Word (DOC, DOCX), PowerPoint (PPT, PPTX), Excel (XLS, XLSX), and PDF (PDF).

Known Issues: 1) Students cannot annotate documents, 2) This does not work with SafeAssign, and 3) Annotation sessions expires after an hour, so if an instructor takes longer than an hour to annotate a document, annotations made after that session expiration may not be saved.

 

For more information:

• Video: Inline Assignment Grading
• PDF: Inline Grading for Assignments