Why is blackboard good?

Division of Information Technology's eLearning Services supports Blackboard. Access to the UofSC Blackboard Login Portal is by USC network username and password. If you have any questions or need help with Blackboard, you can visit the Division of Information Technology Blackboard webpage or contact the Service Desk at 803-777-1800.

You probably have a variety of course documents you provide to your students. Such documents include the syllabus, handouts, projects and assignments. By providing these documents in a central location, your students learn quickly to go to Blackboard to get everything they need for your class. Also, when students forget something that is in the syllabus, you can simply say, "Go to Blackboard and review the syllabus again." Having all of your course documents in a central location saves you and your students' time.

With Blackboard you don't have to key in every students' email address. You simply go to the Communication button and you can select whether to email all students or select students from a list. Also, you can create announcements for your course. You may create an announcement to remind students of a due date or a test they will be taking next week. Whatever announcement you create, it will appear on the first page students see when they log into your class and with one click you can also email the announcement to all students. What a time saver.

Students prefer to see grades immediately. This electronic access reduces the number of inquiries - phone calls and emails - from students wanting to know a grade on a specific assignment or their overall grade in the course. Students can then be responsible for tracking their own performance in the class.

You can develop quizzes and tests students can take through Blackboard. When students complete an electronic test/quiz through Blackboard, it is automatically scored and placed in the grade book. This feature is a great time-saver for faculty, particularly in large classes. Blackboard time-stamps each test/quiz so you know whether the student took it within the allotted time. Tests/quizzes can also be designed to cut off at a certain time and date. Therefore, if students do not take the test/quiz at the allotted time, they cannot get access at a later time. Faculty can set up the test/quiz to provide detailed feedback on each question or simply the right/wrong answer for each question.

Assignments can be submitted on Blackboard electronically. Faculty can then open the assignment, grade it, enter comments and corrections easily and quickly, and enter a grade for the student. This saves time and paper because the student or you do not have to print the assignment. To tell if a student has submitted an assignment, look in your grade book. An exclamation point notes that the student has submitted the assignment and a pad lock indicates that the student has saved the assignment, but it is not ready for grading.

There are a variety of Web-based tools built into Blackboard. Some examples include e-portfolios, wikis, and blogs. These tools provide students an opportunity to meet project requirements in a variety of ways. Some of these tools also allow for student collaboration and the opportunity to edit the work of others.

A self- and peer-assessment tool is built into Blackboard. This tool gives students the opportunity to critique their work and the work of others. This helps students learn to provide constructive feedback and see how other students may approach the same project or assignment. They learn from each other as they assess themselves and/or others.

Introduction

For distance learning courses, the primary reason for using Blackboard is fairly straightforward: Blackboard provides multiple features that allow you to conduct your course at a distance. You can use Blackboard to provide course materials to students; to communcate with those students; to hold synchronous (chat) and asynchronous (threaded bulletin-board-like) discussions; to assess student learning via quizzes, exams, graded assignments, etc.; to post student grades during and at the end of the course, and so on.

All those reasons apply to using Blackboard for traditional (that is, face-to-face) classes, although the benefits are less immediately obvious to those who haven't used Blackboard before. In order to help faculty understand how Blackboard can enhance their face-to-face courses, we'll organize this tutorial around a list of teaching (or other course-related) objectives, which can be fulfilled using particular features of Blackboard. Please note that some of the reasons for using Blackboard listed below link to the same Web page, since the needs are related. All the links below open a new browser window. Once you read the sub-page, you can close out that page to return to this summary document.

Content Management

• I want to put my course materials up on the Web, so students have access to those materials 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (assuming they have an Internet connection).
  Course Document Repository
• I don't want to hear another student say, "I'm sorry, I lost my copy of the syllabus. What was the reading for today?"
  Course Document Repository
• I want my students to listen to my lectures, rather than frantically trying to write down everything I say. I'd like somewhere to archive my lecture outlines or notes so students can read them later.
  Lecture Archive
• My students find the most bizarre "readings" on the Web that they mistakenly believe are authoritative. I'd prefer to give my students a list of Web resources to use - ones that I've pre-screened.
  External Links

Class Discussions and Student Engagement with Course Material

• I'd like to know how my students are engaging with the course readings: what they find interesting, what they're understanding, and what they're misunderstanding.
  Discussion Board Forum
• I want to increase the likelihood that my students are actually doing the reading for the course.
  Discussion Board Forum
• I know there are a bunch of students in the class who are not participating in class discussions, but who have interesting things to say about the readings. I want to learn what they are thinking.
  Forum Participation
• I want to increase the breadth of students engaging in class discussions, along with the depth of what they contribute to those discussions.
  Forum Participation
• I'd like to invite an outside expert to participate in our discussions.
  Other Participants

Assessment of Student Learning and Student Self-Assessment

• I have a fairly large class, and I give frequent midterms/exams, especially multiple-choice ones. Grading those exams is time-consuming. I wish I had someone to grade the exams for me.
  Online Exams
• I find it annoying sometimes to keep track of student essay submissions. It's hard to remember when students submitted their essays, if they submitted the work on time, and even where I put the copies of all those essays. It would be nice if something could help me manage that process more efficiently.
  Assignment Manager
• I'd like my students to be able to assess their understanding of the material *before* their actual exam.
  Online Exams

Communication with Students

• I want to remind students of important, upcoming deadlines, but sometimes I forget to mention them in class.
  Announcements
• Sometimes, there are co-curricular events occuring that are related to our course, and I want to point them out to my students.
  Announcements
• I want to send crucial information to all students in my course or to targeted groups of students.
  E-Mail Feature
• I often wonder how students are reacting to the course. I wish I had an efficent way to solicit feedback from students about how the course is going.
  Surveys

Student Collaboration

• I divide my students into peer-editing groups, and it's always a pain for them to share drafts with one another.
  Groups in Blackboard
• I often assign collaborative assignments, and I want to make it easier for my students to work together as a group.
  Groups in Blackboard

Grade Information

• I find it a pain to keep track of student grades, and the end-of-semester grade calculations take forever. I wish I had a program to do much of that work for me.
  Online Grade Center
• Students don't always to a good job keeping track of their grades in the course, and at the end of the course, they want to know their grades immediately. I'd like to make the students' grade information available to them, but in a secure way.
  Online Grade Center