Pedagogical Uses of Blackboard

Blackboard’s Writing Tools

Blackboard can be more than a convenient way to share documents with your class. In addition to all the features that make Blackboard a quick and efficient course management tool, there are several writing tools that can be used to enhance the learning experiences of your students. These tools don’t replace your familiar teaching strategies, but can be used to increase interaction between you and your students, often allowing students who may shy away from class discussions to express their ideas. These tools can allow you to observe your students’ progress between large papers, helping you to identify when students may need a little extra guidance to hone their writing and ideas. These writing tools can, when used well, not only increase the amount and quality of writing a student produces, but can also help create a sense of community in your class. 
 

Discussion Boards

Use discussion boards to enable conversations between you and your students.  Discussion boards are good tools to use for when you are looking for divergent information from students. Well-designed discussion assignments support meaningful interaction and cooperation among students.

Tips

1. Give students some guidelines on appropriate netiquette for using discussion boards.
2. Provide deadlines for posts.
3. Provide an explanation of what “quality posts” are. Consider creating a grading rubric and sharing it with the class.
4. Add points for both students when one student responds to another student’s post. This encourages students to write their posts early enough for others to read.
5. Consider the point value of the discussion posts. This is one way to insure that students participate in the assignment.
6. Ask questions that elicit a range of responses from students.
7. Wait for students to articulate their ideas and demonstrate peer interaction, then ask probing questions at the right time to scaffold the students’ responses.
8. Avoid omniscient or evaluative posts that might stifle the students’ ideas.
9. Continue to encourage critical thinking, allowing the dialogue to emerge, sustaining interaction for the appropriate amount of time.
10. Students should feel that their work is valued; make sure that all students receive some feedback, either from you, or their peers.
11. Look for and encourage higher-order thinking skills in students’ posts.

How to Use This Tool

1. If an area to put your discussion board does not already exist, create one by clicking the plus sign in the upper left of your Blackboard window, selecting Tool Link from the menu, providing a name, such as Discussions, and selecting Discussion Board from the Type menu. Don’t forget to check the Available to Users checkbox so your students will see it.
2. After the tool link has been added, you can move it to the desired location by hovering over the link until the double-headed arrows are visible, clicking on them, and dragging the link to the desired place in the menu.
3. Next, navigate to it and click the Create Forum button. Enter a name for your discussion board such as Weekly Reading Discussions, type a description for the discussion board, make sure that the forum is available, set any forum settings you want to apply, and click the Submit button.
4. Once the forum has been created, click on its link and click the Create Thread button. Type a thread subject, such as Chapter One Discussion, enter a Message, such as What themes in chapter one are relevant to our class discussion?, add any necessary attachments, and click the Submit button.
    

Wikis

A wiki is simply a webpage that users can edit directly. Use wikis for collaborative writing assignments such as group papers or encyclopedia-type entries. Wikis are good tools for when you are looking for convergent information from students. Use wikis for any situation where you want a collaboratively written paper on a specific topic or set of topics.

Tips

1. Provide guidelines for how students should agree to make edits to their wiki pages.
2. Provide clear directions for what students should write.
3. Consider creating a rubric for the grading of the wiki entries.
4. Provide ongoing feedback on your students work in the wiki
5. Encourage students to form their own “support groups” on how to use the wiki effectively.

How to Use This Tool

1. If an area to put your wiki does not already exist, create one by clicking the plus sign in the upper left of your Blackboard window, selecting Tool Link from the menu, providing a name, such as Class Wiki, and selecting Wikis from the Type menu. Don’t forget to check the Available to Users checkbox so your students will see it.
2. Once the tool link has been added you can move it to the desired location by hovering over the link until the double-headed arrows are visible, clicking on them, and dragging the link to the desired place in the menu.
3. Next, click on it to enter the blog area and click on the Create Wiki button. In the resulting form, provide a name and instructions for the wiki, make sure the wiki is available, select how students should be able to participate in this wiki, and the settings for the grading of the wiki. Then, click the Submit button.
    

Blogs

Blogs are composed of posts presented in reverse chronological order. Blogs are often vehicles for individuals who want to share their ideas with a potentially global audience. Most blogs support the commenting of posts by viewers. Blogs are good tools to use for when you are looking for divergent information from students.

Tips

1. Encourage blog contributors to identify who their target audience is, and write posts that take their audience into consideration.
2. If supported by the blog software, suggest that posters incorporate images and/or links in their posts.
3. Consider assigning students roles for their blogs or blog posts. Roles can include the following (first three roles taken from this site)

• First Readers: These students are responsible for posting initial questions and insights about the day’s material to the class blog the day before class meets.
• Respondents: Students in this group build upon, disagree with, or clarify the first readers’ posts by the next class meeting.
• Searchers: Students in this group find and share at least one relevant online resource. In addition to linking to the resource, the searchers provide a short evaluation of the resource, highlighting what makes it worthwhile, unusual, or, if appropriate, problematic.
• Summarizer: Students in this group analyze all other posts and provide a brief overview of the ideas expressed.
• Devils Advocate: Students in this group articulate “the other side of the story” of blog posts.
• Synthesizer: Students in this group put ideas together and make new connections.
• Moderator: Students in this group find common ground between posts, connecting ideas and helping posters reach consensus.

How to Use This Tool

1. If an area to put your blog does not already exist, create one by clicking the plus sign in the upper left of your Blackboard window, selecting Tool Link from the menu, providing a name, such as Class Blog, and selecting Blogs from the Type menu. Don’t forget to check the Available to Users checkbox so your students will see it.
2. Once the tool link has been added, you can move it to the desired location by hovering over the link until the double-headed arrows are visible, clicking on them, and dragging the link to the desired place in the menu.
3. Next, click on it to enter the blog area and click on the Create Blog button. In the resulting form, provide a name and instructions for the blog, make sure the blog is available, select whether you want each student to have their own blog or if you want one blog for the entire class, how you want to record blog participation, and the settings for the blog and for grading. Then, click the Submit button.
    

Journals

Journals are like blogs, but their content is only shared between the student and the instructor. Journals allow students to reflect candidly on what they’re learning and how it is affecting them.

Tips

1. Write open-ended questions that help students make conceptual connections. One example might be “How do the ideas expressed in this weeks reading influence your understanding of previous readings?”
2. Provide ideas for starting thoughts; for example, The technology I would miss most if it were to disappear is… or The most personally relevant part of this week’s reading was…

How to Use This Tool

1. If an area to put your journal does not already exist, create one by clicking the plus sign in the upper left of your Blackboard window, selecting Tool Link from the menu, providing a name, such as Personal Journal, and selecting Journals from the Type menu. Don’t forget to check the Available to Users checkbox so your students will see it.
2. After the tool link has been added, you can move it to the desired location by hovering over the link until the double-headed arrows are visible, clicking on them, and dragging the link to the desired place in the menu.
3. Next, click on it to enter the journal area and click on the Create Journal button. In the resulting form, provide a name and instructions for the journal, make sure the journal is available, select journal date and time restrictions, journal settings, and grade settings. Then, click the Submit button.
    

Blackboard’s Test Tool

Blackboard’s test tool can help with student learning by using it for formative assessments in between midterm and final exams. Formative assessments, rather than measuring performance on large amounts of information, can be used to reinforce learning as it occurs and provide students with a low-stakes way to determine how well they are understanding the current material, and what “course corrections” may be helpful in keeping them on track. Formative assessments do not need to take a long time. A brief multiple-choice test may provide all the feedback a student needs to determine if he or she has a solid grasp of the material, or needs to review.
 

Tips

1. Consider not recording scores to the formative assessment; this can be accomplished by choosing the "Hide Results for this Test" in the "Self-Assessment" options on the "Test Options" page.
2. Use the results obtained by your students as indicators of what content should be reviewed before a summative test.
3. Consider allowing students to work together on the formative assessment. Group work gives the students a chance to explain their thinking with others, which supports their learning of the material.
    

How to Use This tool

1. If an area to put your test does not already exist, create one by clicking the plus sign in the upper left of your Blackboard window, selecting Content Area from the menu, and providing a name, such as Quizzes. Don’t forget to check the Available to Users checkbox so your students will see it.
2. After the content area link has been added, you can move it to the desired location by hovering over the link until the double-headed arrows are visible, clicking on them and dragging the link to the desired place in the menu.
3. Next, click on it to enter the content area area and select Assessments -> Test. In the resulting window, click the Create button and enter the test name, description, and instructions. Then, click the Submit button. Once the test has been created, use the Create Question dropdown menu to select question types. For question types that support it, consider including feedback for responses. Once you have finished adding questions, click the Question Settings button. In this form specify whether you want feedback given for individual answers, whether you want images, files and web links to be addable to questions and answers, whether you want question metadata added to questions, how you want scoring to be assigned, and the degree to which the display of answers can be specified. Then, click the Submit button.
4. Once you have all your questions in place and the question settings correct, click the OK button at the bottom right. This will take you back to the Create Test page, where you can now add your newly created test by selecting it and clicking Submit. Now, clicking on the content area you created in step 1 will allow you to view the tests in this area.
5. Once you are ready to make the test available, hover over the name of the test and click the downward-pointing chevron and select Edit the Test Options. In the resulting window, click the Yes radio button for Make the Link Available.

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