Posters and Slides from the 2011 Blackboard World Conference

At the Blackboard World conference in July 2011, several of the e-Learning Center’s staff, along with other Northern Arizona University colleagues, gave poster sessions or presentations that were well received and generated a lot of interest among conference attendees. By request, we’re making the posters available in a downloadable size (17 x 11 inches, .pdf). Click on each small poster image below to see the larger .pdf version. The posters were created by the e-Learning Center’s Creative Design Group. PowerPoint slides (.pptx) are also available for one presentation.

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Listening to Student Voices: Assessing and Responding to Students’ Experiences with Blackboard Learn

A poster session by Dr. Sue Pieper, Coordinator of Assessment,
and Don Carter, Director

Last year, as part of a pilot project in which Northern Arizona University investigated Blackboard Learn for possible adoption as the university’s learning management system, we surveyed our students, asking them about their experiences in using Blackboard Learn in the pilot courses. The results of that survey are summarized on the poster along with recommendations for Blackboard and for other institutions that are considering using Blackboard Learn.

Complete survey results are available in the full research report.

View the poster (17″ x 11″ .pdf).

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The Pedagogical Opportunities of Mobile Technologies: iPads and Kindles in the Classroom

A poster session by Dr. John Doherty, Instructional Designer,
and Kevin Ketchner, Librarian, Cline Library

With mobile devices beginning to enter the classroom, students are only two finger-swipes away from the game Angry Birds Rio, or YouTube, or any number of other popular diversions. Ketchner and Doherty describe how to use mobile apps and tools in ways that engage students in class and encourage student interaction with peers, instructors, and content. They provide examples of appropriate and effective choices that can enhance learning.

View the poster (17″ x 11″ .pdf).

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(R)eflective Learning: The Experience of Journaling from Campus Edition to Bb Learn

A poster session by Dr. John Doherty, Instructional Designer,
and Kevin Ketchner, Librarian, Cline Library

This poster is organized around Dee Fink’s Creating Significant Learning Experiences (Jossey-Bass, 2003). Ketchner and Doherty deconstruct Fink’s model, presenting an application and example of how online journaling can enhance students’ critical
reflection, self-reflection, thinking, and metacognition. They contend that reflective learning through journaling leads to insight and significant learning experiences for students.

View the poster (17″ x 11″ .pdf).

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From Vista 8 to Blackboard Learn 9.1— Lessons
Learned and Tips for Success

A presentation by Dan Stoffel, Assistant Director,
and Erin Shelley, Blackboard Learn System Administrator

Northern Arizona University has just made the transition from Blackboard Vista 8 (formerly WebCT Vista) to Blackboard Learn 9.1. The process of moving to a new learning management system includes the migration of nearly 2000 courses from the old system to the new. This presentation describes NAU’s course migration process and suggests strategies for other institutions who are following a similar path.

Download the PowerPoint slides (.pptx).

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Pedagogy and Online Learning: Training Users on Backward Design

A presentation by Dr. John Doherty, Instructional Designer,
and Wally Nolan, Instructional Designer

The design and development of online content is sometimes too focused on the learning management system rather than on students’ learning. The backward design approach, described well in Understanding by Design by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe (Pearson, 2006), helps instructors begin with the end—learning—in mind. This presentation described self-paced online tutorials that guide instructors and course creators to align their learning objectives, assessments, and learning activities independent of a learning management system.

Using Assessment to Engage Your Students

by Sue Pieper
Coordinator for Assessment, e-Learning Center at Northern Arizona University

How can we get students to attend our classes?

How can we get students to participate in class?

How can we prevent students from cheating?

These questions dominated the conversations at a recent Course Redesign (CR) Conference, and faculty in the small group sessions on assessment were adamant about getting some answers. While these were very real concerns for course instructors, now, a few weeks after the conference, I continue to wonder whether their questions were getting at the core of the issue. I wonder if these concerns might, in fact, be symptoms of an underlying “disease” infecting our students—particularly students in large classes. Could our students be suffering from a lack of engagement?

What is student engagement, really? Researchers and educators have tossed around the term for years. Definitions of student engagement have varied greatly, from students’ time-on-task behaviors (Brophy, 1983) to their use of metacognition and self-regulation (Pintrich and De Groot, 1990). Most definitions have included some element of students connecting with and thinking deeply about the course content. These are desirable outcomes for any classroom instructor, but they are not always easy to achieve, especially if you are teaching a class of 100+ students.

What’s an Instructor to Do?

There are plenty of ideas out there in the literature. I did a quick search of an education database for “student engagement” and found over 5,000 entries! The problem is in knowing where to begin. So here’s my attempt to provide assistance: three steps for using assessment to create a more engaging course. These steps are based on the CR Conference discussions as well as my work consulting with faculty who are designing assessments for their online, hybrid, and web-enhanced courses.

Take a look at what you’re already doing.

You can incorporate questions about assessment in your end-of-the-course evaluations. Better yet, throughout the semester you can ask the students about how the course assessments are going. Psychology professor Melissa Birkett recently developed a survey that she’ll administer at mid-semester in her PSY 255 course, Introduction to Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience. The survey asks students about a new portfolio project she’s incorporated into the course. In addition to some scaled items, Melissa asks students to write short answers to items such as “One aspect of this project I enjoyed was…” “One aspect of this project I found challenging was…” and “I learned the most from this project by…” By administering the survey mid-semester, Melissa will be able to make small modifications before the course ends, if necessary, as well as plan for next semester’s portfolio project. For other methods of gathering students’ reactions to your course assessments, check out the chapter on Techniques for Assessing Learner Reactions to Instruction in Thomas A. Angelo and K. Patricia Cross’s Classroom Assessment Techniques: A Handbook for College Teachers.

Think about what you might do differently.

Which course assessment strategies are working for you, and which need some work? CR Conference participants provided lots of ideas for rethinking how you use assessment in your course. Nora Dunbar, Psychology lecturer and CR Conference participant, suggested thinking about incorporating collaborative work. If you’ve historically used individual assignments and assessments, consider including group/pair work. Students learn from sharing ideas. You, the instructor, will benefit, too. If the group, rather than each individual student, is responsible for a discussion post or final project, then you will have fewer final products to assess.Paula Garcia McAllister, Director of Northern Arizona University’s Institutional Review Board, suggested using short writing assignments in courses. If you’ve routinely used only mid-term and final multiple-choice exams to assess students, think about integrating several brief papers throughout the semester and using a rubric. Think about your criteria for assessing students, and then in the rubric, for each criterion describe the performance levels that correspond to the grade or points you will award. Up-front work in constructing a solid rubric leads to huge payoffs for you and your students. Your students will know exactly what kind of performance you expect from them, and you will spend less time assessing. The quality of students’ work is also likely to improve as the semester progresses. For a quick overview of how to make and use a rubric, take a look at Peter Gow’s slide show.

Some of these ideas are discussed in more depth in the Tuesday Tips on Teaching with Technology podcasts Assessment and Large Course Redesign with Wally Nolan and Sue Pieper and Pedagogy and Large Course Redesign with John Doherty and Wally Nolan. These podcasts are available as part of a podcast series (iTunes U link) on using technology to improve teaching and learning. You might also find two books from the Jossey-Bass Guides to Online Teaching and Learning series helpful: Rita-Marie Conrad and J. Ana Donaldson’s Engaging the Online Learner and Rena M. Palloff and Keith Pratt’s Assessing the Online Learner.

Consider whether technology could help.

Once you’ve decided what you’d like to change about the assessments in your course, think about how technology might assist you. Cathryn Ellis, Theatre professor and CR Conference participant, added Blackboard Vista quizzes before the start of her class and found that drop/fail/withdraw grades decreased and student understanding of the course material increased. Short quizzes administered online throughout the semester provide immediate and ongoing feedback and help students to learn. They also help you know how and where to focus instruction. Other instructors are experimenting with “clickers,” automatic response systems that can be used to promote collaboration and critical thinking among students. For more about clickers, see John Doherty and Wally Nolan’s blog post, Pedagogy and Large Course Redesign. You might also want to check out a couple of resource sites that provide information about how to implement clickers and the impact of clickers on student learning. For more about web tools that could be used for assessment, take a look at Educause Quarterly Magazine, Volume 2, Number 4, 2009. The entire issue is devoted to technology tools and student engagement.

After you’ve implemented a new assessment technique, you’ll need to ask students again how your course assessments are working for them. If you continue to follow the steps listed above, you will be able to improve your course over time. However, these ideas are only the beginning of a treatment for lack of student engagement in our courses. I’d like to hear about what you’re doing to promote student engagement in your classes. Have you tried any of these strategies or techniques in your classes? How have you engaged students through assessment? Feel free to share your ideas in the comments.

Resources

Brophy, J. (1983). Conceptualizing student motivation. Educational Psychologist, 18 (3), 200-215.

Pintrich, P. R., & De Groot, E. V. (1990). Motivational and self-regulated learning components of classroom academic performance. Journal of Educational Psychology, 82 (1): 33-40.