Academic Year 2007-8
Welcome back after what has hopefully been a relaxing and productive summer for you. Here in CLQE we’ve really had neither, but this issue outlines what we have managed to achieve, and the changes that you will find in place. You will also find an extensive listing of training available for the new term in the usual place on the back cover of this issue.
The ‘rollover’ process, the name given to changing modules and enrolments from one academic year to the next is now almost complete. Under normal circumstances, we would expect to complete this exercise very early in the summer schedule, however, this year such work had to wait for the completion of the Key Operational System Review by ICT Systems. ICTS wanted to look in depth at the underlying infrastructure which runs Blackboard to ensure that they have the stability and performance facility to support what you are going to do with the learning environment over the coming year[s]. Following on-site consultation with a senior product engineer from Blackboard™, ICTS are drawing up a plan for some staged changes to make improvements. Some have already happened over the summer. Such changes should be invisible to you, the end-user.
Changes made by E@T will not be invisible! A number of things have already changed, and we have one or two more things up our sleeves to put in place before term starts. Some of them are detailed in the rest of this newsletter, but be sure to keep an eye on our blog for up-to-date news and info!
Best before 07/07
As a commercial product, Blackboard has just celebrated its 10th birthday. Over those 10 years, many of the original features have been improved. The new versions have not always been universally welcomed by users familiar with the old-style functionality, but sometimes changes need to be made. This summer we’re having a bit of a facelift, and updating your Blackboard to hide some old features. So for 2007-8 you will see a streamlined set of modules—students continue to have access to all their previously-studied modules, but staff will see only last and this year’s listings. We’ve noticed people don’t really use the modules tab, so we’ve brought links that used to be on your modules tab onto your home page and taken away the modules tab—that’s less clicking to find things, and more tab space for other things!
Best before 07/07—Digital Dropbox RIP
Lots of people have used Blackboard’s electronic submission tool, the ‘digital dropbox’ for many years. However we find that you often experience problems with it. These fall into three main types, Often we get requests to identify whether a student has actually submitted a piece of work because it is not visible. We can usually help you on this, but it takes quite a bit of fiddly database-querying. But we can’t help when people get frustrated because the digital dropbox is just one big bucket: you can’t sort by user or assignment, you can’t see at a glance who hasn’t submitted and you certainly can’t download all the essays together to save/mark, nor can you easily offer feedback to each student should you wish. None of these things were built as part of the dropbox in the original product. It will never be able to do them. Blackboard developers knew this, and instead of trying to sticky-tape an old feature, they asked what people really needed to do with electronic submission and released the assignment feature some time ago. This is the de facto standard for electronic submission, and although some Health & Social Care programmes have retained the dropbox while other schools have already moved to the assignments feature, in 2007 modules, there is NO dropbox. The assignments tool is much more effective. There is a new recipe sheet and interactive guide to using assignments, and if you do not feel confident, then please email us at and someone will come over and talk you through it step by step. The big advantages of assignments are:
1) You can set an assignment anywhere in your content, with a template or model report that the students need to read and complete. They submit their completed work back here where it fits in their learning programme.
2) Each time you create an assignment, a column is created for it in the gradebook. Now you can see at a glance who has submitted and who has not, and you can use the gradebook tools to download all the submitted essays for that assignment together. You can also use the gradebook to provide individual feedback to each student, to allow them to see moderated marks if you wish, and also to add notes on each essay visible only to your team teaching colleagues.
The assignment tool is much more efficient than the old digital dropbox. E@T will no longer support the digital dropbox.
Home visits
If you have been in your office over the summer, you may well have been visited by one of the E@T Team. As promised last year, the team have been out and about talking to staff members, finding out what you need from us to support you, offering on-the-spot advice, and bringing your views back to the team to help decide what things we need to change and where we need to be going. Don’t feel left out if you were missed out, now you’re back visits will be stepped up! You will see from the back page that lots of localised training has been arranged for next term, but we also still offer desk sessions—if there’s just one little topic that’s driving you nuts, let us come over and smooth it out. Our services are completely free, although we do like proper coffee (hint)… We have been collating what we’ve been hearing, and will be combining these and some outline data on Blackboard usage for each School during September, so that you know where you would like us to help too. We’re very open to suggestions for localised training or ideas for interactive tutorials. To offer this level of support we’re still expanding our team: Helen Ashley is our latest recruit, a learning technologist with experience in multimedia, some of you will already have met her in interactive whiteboard training.
News feeds
You will have access to a number of newsfeeds this year. They’ll mostly be found on the new tab entitled ‘Staff Lounge’, but you can add them to your home tab if you want (see layout, below). You’ve read about RSS feeds before in our newsletters, and lots of you have been to our training or E@T Lunches on them. This year we’ll be encouraging you to make the most of them. We will be showing you how to use them more in the classroom via tools like Scholar (see other editions of E@T News), but for a moment we’d like to concentrate on how you can use them personally. To leverage the full power of scholar amongst colleagues, you’ll need to agree a ‘tagsonomy’, which we’ll come round and help with, but in the meantime, E@T and your Learning & Teaching Coordinators are already collecting material relevant to you. Scholar feeds will be identifiable by the Scholar logo in the bottom right-hand corner. However there will also be direct access for you to news and in some cases events feeds from your Higher Education Academy subject centre. These will be identified by this logo, and will keep you up-to-date on happenings in your field, including any available funding rounds. Worth keeping an eye on then! News from E@T will also be available to you—click on the headlines from the feed with the notepad logo. Other general RSS feeds will have the RSS icon.
Lots of people were concerned about RSS technology when we introduced it in an earlier newsletter, but we hope that you will not worry about the technology but just enjoy having the information brought straight to your desktop.
If you’re an advanced RSS user, we’ve also helped bring your feeds into Blackboard, with a direct link to leading online readers, Google Reader and Bloglines, which we recommend as it allows you to subscribe to and play podcasts too.
Blackboard tabs: Content & Layout
You don’t have to have Blackboard just as we give it to you, you know… Part of the upgrade to community last summer that lets us bring more content to you also allows you to decide how you see it. Try out some of the little icons: you can maximise and minimise boxes to hide things and save space, if there’s a pencil icon you can edit what you see, and if there’s a red cross you can delete something altogether. Clicking the Modify Content button lets you choose other content, and Modify Layout moves it around to have what you find important at the top!
E@T News and the Staff Lounge
Just a reminder that up-to-the-moment info will be posted for you all year on our blog. We’re not only bringing you the headlines in via an RSS feed, but we’ve also put a direct link in the ‘Staff Lounge’ for all the current and previous items. This new Staff Lounge tab will bring together lots of info and resources for you, whether it’s new recipe sheets, case studies, interactive tutorials or things we’ve found elsewhere we think you’ll find useful. Take a moment to relax and catch up over a coffee. Unfortunately we can’t provide the coffee or the armchair, unless you come visit us in person for a chat, in which case we guarantee both!
Workshop Programme
Elearning and Blackboard Workshops Sep—Dec 2007.
Opening Times / This Season’s SpecialsWed 12th and Fri 14th September / Building your module
Creating an efficient and effective online module
Wed 19th and Fri 21st September / Introducing New Features
What’s new this term with Blackboard
Wed 26th and Fri 28th September / Getting Started with Images
Using pictures to bring your modules to life
Wed 3rd October / E@T Lunch—Module Makeover
Get ideas for sprucing up your modules
Wed 10th and Fri 12th October / Podcasting and RSS
Creating audio and adding up to the minute newsfeeds
Wed 17th and Fri 19th October / Blogs and Wikis
Adding interactive elements and improving collaboration
Wed 24th and Fri 26th October / Course Genie
Convert word documents to web pages. Easily.
Wed 31st October and Fri 2nd November / Developing Online Practice
You can do the everyday stuff. What’s next?
Wed 7th and Fri 9th November / Informal Drop-In Session
For staff with specific elearning queries
Wed 14th and Fri 16th November / Improving Student Experience
What do students want and need
Wed 21st and Fri 23rd November / Tests and Quizzes
Interactive formative and summative assessment
Wed 28th and Fri 30th November / Using Video Online
How to add moving images to modules
Wed 5th December / E@T Lunch—Module Makeover
Get ideas for sprucing up your modules
Wed 12th and Fri 14th December / Innovative Teaching
Sharing good practice—What works and what doesn’t
Sessions are available to all staff. Wednesday sessions are from 2pm—4pm, Friday sessions are from 10am—12pm. Session locations vary. Group workshops can be tailored to suit specific subject areas and teaching clusters either at CLQE or in schools.
A wide range of Recipe Sheets are available from the new Staff Lounge tab on Blackboard (arriving imminently!)
Desk sessions with E@T staff are also available. For all training and workshop enquiries, please contact To book a place on any of these workshops, please email:
E@T well!