Is your Blackboard site fit to be seen in public?
With the new academic year looming, you will want to make sure that your Blackboard course is in a fit state for students to use. I know there is a widely held view that Blackboard is not fit for purpose, and it’s a view that I am sympathetic to, but that’s a discussion we can […]
Blackboard Teaching and Learning Conference 2015
I recently attended the Blackboard teaching and Learning Conference in Liverpool. This is Blackboard’s main showcase event for Europe. There were no big surprises in the Blackboard ‘Road Map’ at this event, most of the information about improvements to Blackboard Learn and Mobile had been made at previous events. However there were to changes that […]
Enhancing DL with Learning Technology. Report on a workshop for the School of Education.
I recently ran a day long workshop for the School of Education with Matt Mobbs . It was aimed at using learning technologies to enhance their MA TESOL Distance Learning course. We thought we’d practice what we preach, by using technology to enhance our teaching. So we started the day with a brainstorming session on […]
The Durham 15th Annual Blackboard Users’ Conference
This Year’s Theme: Students as Partners I recently attended the 15th annual Durham Blackboard Users’ Conference. This is organised and held at Durham University in the first week of January every year. The theme for this year’s conference was ‘Students as Partners’. As usual there was a range of different workshops and presentations […]
Blackboard Education on Tour 2014
I recently attended the annual Blackboard Education on Tour conference in London. The event provides an opportunity to listen to Blackboard’s senior staff outlining the latest developments and plans for Blackboard. There are two strands to the event – Product discussion and Personal Development. I attended the Personal Development strand, which turned out to be […]
Using Blogs to Promote Writing and Student Interaction
I have had an increase in enquiries from staff in the college recently about using collaborative tools for learning. The fact that people are beginning to see the benefits of these collaborative spaces is a welcome development. With that in mind, this is a timely research paper from Miriam Sullivan and Nancy Longnecker from the […]
The Student Voice and a Framework for Learning Technology
photo credit: HikingArtist.com via photopin cc In a previous blog, reporting on the Blackboard Teaching and Learning Conference, I mentioned ‘student centred’ approaches to teaching and learning with technology. Another presentation at the conference highlighted research from Malcolm Murray and his colleagues at Durham University (Murray et al 2014) in which the student was at […]
Blackboard Teaching and Learning Conference – new developments
photo credit: adesigna via photopin cc New developments for Blackboard I mentioned in an earlier post that Blackboard are becoming more responsive to their local markets. The ugly phrase they used to describe this is ‘countrification’. As a result of this several new features and changes to design were unveiled at the Blackboard Teaching […]
The Blackboard Teaching and Learning Conference – two views of ‘learner-centred’
photo credit: ransomtech via photopin cc The idea of putting learners at the centre of learning was a theme that ran through many of the presentations, including the main Blackboard corporate presentations at the Blackboard Teaching and Learning Conference in Dublin at the beginning of May. However, I noticed two different views of ‘student-centred’ learning. […]
The Problem with Plagiarism Detection Software
photo credit: Jisc via photopin cc Here’s a discussion between two students ‘from a prestigious university’, reported by McKenna and Hughes (2013): Don: what is the extent to which we’re allowed to plagiarise, 17% or something? Mark: No, it’s just like 20%, but I mean that’s all […]
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