{"id":1321,"date":"2013-11-20T10:33:39","date_gmt":"2013-11-20T10:33:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/telsocsci\/?p=1321"},"modified":"2025-02-26T13:16:22","modified_gmt":"2025-02-26T13:16:22","slug":"case-study-enhancing-sociology-blackboard-sites","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/telsocsci\/blackboard\/case-study-enhancing-sociology-blackboard-sites\/","title":{"rendered":"Case Study – Enhancing Sociology Blackboard sites"},"content":{"rendered":"

Context<\/h1>\n

The administrators in the Department of Sociology felt that that their Blackboard courses looked unattractive, and tired, and that students would require something more inviting if they were to engage with their online environment.\u00a0The Department of Sociology has 43 courses on Blackboard (28 undergraduate and 15 postgraduate). \u00a0The Blackboard sites are mainly used to store course content such as lecture slides, reading material, and links to websites. They are also a portal for uploading assignments using Turnitin.<\/p>\n

The task was to upgrade the Blackboard sites to the new university Blackboard template. This was to be carried out over the summer period, on live courses, after the academic year had ended.<\/p>\n

Each site took approximately 30 minutes to complete. It was decided that the postgraduate courses would be a separate project, to be completed at a later date. This left the 28 undergraduate courses, so around 14 hours\u2019 work, or 2 full working days just to do the changeover. The Sociology administrator will populate some sections with details taken from the module handbooks.<\/p>\n

The old course sites<\/h1>\n

The old sites had a uniform appearance, with similar menu items, and a similar colour scheme. The sites opened on the Announcements page (click images for full size).<\/p>\n

\"Old<\/a><\/p>\n

Some of the menu items on the left hand side were unused. As one of the administrators said \u2018we never knew what they were for\u2019. The new template was based upon research carried out with students and staff and one of the common complaints from students was that there were too many menu items, and they often differed from course to course.<\/p>\n

The menu was transformed into that illustrated on the right.\u00a0It is is less cluttered and has a cleaner look. Lecturers are able to hide any menu items that they don\u2019t use.<\/p>\n

\"Old<\/a><\/p>\n

\"New<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The redundant menu items were \u2018Communication\u2019, \u2018Virtual Classroom\u2019 and \u2018Tools\u2019. These were removed.<\/p>\n

The items \u2018Module Information\u2019 and \u2018Module Materials\u2019 often contained duplicated materials, and what was considered \u2018Module Information\u2019 in one course came under \u2018Module Materials\u2019 in another, and vice versa. The material under these headings was placed under \u2018Materials & Activities\u2019 and \u2018Overview\u2019 in the new template.<\/p>\n

\u2018Announcements\u2019 was removed, with the announcements now appearing on the new Home Page.<\/p>\n

\u2018Assignments\u2019 was replaced with \u2018Assessment\u2019 and the \u2018Submit Your Coursework Here\u2019 folder was placed in the Assessment area and removed from the menu.<\/p>\n

\u2018Contacts\u2019 was replaced with \u2018Help & Contacts\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u2018Discussion Board\u2019 became \u2018Discussions\u2019. Wikis, and Groups sections were added.<\/p>\n

\u2018Past Exam Papers\u2019 was removed and placed in the \u2018Assessment\u2019 section.<\/p>\n

Finally, a \u2018Module Feedback\u2019 section was added.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What\u2019s in each section?<\/h1>\n

The new Home<\/b> page \u2013 the \u2018landing page\u2019 for the courses – was changed to this:<\/p>\n

\"New<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0This replaced the \u2018Announcements\u2019 page illustrated earlier. The new Home page has an Announcements item, a \u2018What\u2019s New\u2019 item \u2013 which lists any new content, and a Using Blackboard item, which is a guide to Blackboard features. The header has some HTML coding beneath the main image which inserts the user\u2019s name and the course they are in.<\/p>\n

Images were used inside sections to make them look more appealing. The same images were used throughout all of the courses for consistency.<\/p>\n

For example, this is the \u2018Assignment\u2019 section before:<\/p>\n

\"Old<\/a><\/p>\n

And the \u2018Assessment\u2019 section after:<\/p>\n

\"New<\/a><\/p>\n

The Assessment<\/strong> section has folders for Past Exam Papers, and a folder for uploading assignments. There is also a general Assessment folder which will have details of the course assessment plus more generic university resources and guidance on assessment.<\/p>\n

The Overview<\/strong> contains information about the module, the module handbook, and some generic content and links from the university relating to study skills and information. There is a course link to the assessment section.<\/p>\n

\"overview<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0Materials & Activities<\/strong> contains resources such as lecture slides and notes, and seminar materials. Where possible this was arranged into weekly folders, as requested by the administrators in the Sociology Department. However, this was occasionally not possible due to the way that the lecturer had organised their original course, or because it was difficult to work out which lectures took place in which week.<\/p>\n

It is hoped that the Reading List <\/b>will eventually contain a Talis Aspire electronic list, but this requires training across the department. So at the moment course reading is listed in standard folders.<\/p>\n

What I\u2019d do differently<\/h1>\n

The Sociology administrators sent out several emails to academic staff to inform them about the changes and to ask for their opinions. No replies were received at all. If I was to do this project again I would get a short slot at the Teaching and Learning Committee to explain the potential changes and their merits. Then ask for two or three academic staff to have their courses enhanced as a pilot study to see what they thought. I\u2019d do this on \u2018dummy\u2019 courses rather than the live ones. This could then be fed back to the other staff in the department. I would also create copies of all of the courses, rather than making the changes to live courses. Then switch over once the changes were done and approved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Context The administrators in the Department of Sociology felt that that their Blackboard courses looked unattractive, and tired, and that students would require something more inviting if they were to engage with their online environment.\u00a0The Department of Sociology has 43 courses on Blackboard (28 undergraduate and 15 postgraduate). \u00a0The Blackboard sites are mainly used to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":63,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,97,89],"tags":[232,118,233,91,207],"class_list":["post-1321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blackboard","category-case-study","category-course","tag-blackboard","tag-college-of-social-science","tag-course","tag-enhancing-blackboard","tag-sociology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/telsocsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/telsocsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/telsocsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/telsocsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/63"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/telsocsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1321"}],"version-history":[{"count":32,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/telsocsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1321\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1651,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/telsocsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1321\/revisions\/1651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/telsocsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/telsocsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/telsocsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}