• Why Choose Vevox? 

    In recent months, we’ve seen a growing trend in the use of online tools to boost student engagement and collaboration, and it’s easy to understand why! Our institution offers licenses for both Padlet and Vevox. While we’ve already covered Padlet in a previous post, it’s time to highlight the fantastic features of Vevox! 

    Vevox is a user-friendly live polling, quizzing and Q&A app that can be used in various ways to enhance interaction. To get started, simply sign in here: Vevox Sign In and choose Login with SSO for easy access through our single sign-on system (the exact same username and password you use for all Edge Hill systems).

    Creating Polls with Vevox 

    Live polls are great to engage students and encourage interaction during lectures & seminars.  There are lots of different question types to choose from such as Multiple Choice, Word Clouds, Ranking and Rating.  You can even add an element of gamification to your Polls by showing the Leaderboard or the Speed Leaderboard (fastest finger first!). By default, Polls are anonymous, but you can change a session settings asking your participants to identify themselves.

     

    To get started:

    1. Click “Create Session” and give your session a name.
    2. In the left-hand menu, select “Polls,” then click “Create New.”
    3. Choose your question type. 
    4. Add your question. 
    5. Add your answer choices if appropriate (e.g. for Multiple Choice).
    6. Select whether there is a correct answer (or not).
    7. Click “Create.” 

    For detailed instructions on the different types of Polls, have a look at the help guide on Polling

    Ready to Run your First Poll?

    When you are ready to run your Poll you must first Start the Session. You can then select Open Poll.

    Select PRESENT FULLSCREEN to share the session ID (9 digit code unique to the session) and a handy QR code with your students.

    From the presenter screen toolbar along the bottom, you can choose to Show results, Start Timer, adjust the time, close the poll and also show the Q&A board.

    The vevox toolbar will be along the bottom of your screen

    If you have more than one Poll in your session, once you have run through the first question close the poll.   You will then have the option to open your next question.

    You can select which question you want to show from the toolbar along the bottom

    Once you have completed your questions press the escape button or exit full screen on the menu.

    Using Vevox’s Q&A Board 

    In addition to live polls, you can use Vevox’s Q&A board to gather questions from your students, whether during a seminar or at a later time. To get started, just select Q&A from the left menu and enable your Q&A Board. You can even send a welcome message or announcement to kick things off! 

    Once a student submits a question, others can upvote it, pushing the most popular questions to the top of the list. Be sure to set clear expectations with your students about whether you’ll address the questions during the session or afterwards. 

    It’s a simple yet powerful way to encourage participation and make sure everyone’s voice is heard and can encourage those quieter students to have voice too.

    Using Vevox’s Survey Feature 

    Vevox’s Survey tool is perfect for asynchronous activities such as knowledge checks, quizzes or revision tests, allowing students to complete it at their own pace. 

    Creating a survey is just as easy as making a poll. Once you’ve added all your questions, simply click Start Survey

    Students can access the survey the same way they would a poll, but instead, they’ll select the Survey option. This feature offers a flexible way to gather feedback or assess understanding outside of live sessions. 

    You don’t have to use Presenter view for the Survey feature, but rather you can use the 9 digit ID to encourage students to participate. You can distribute the code and/or link via the likes of email or within Blackboard content.

    Accessing Session Data  

    Once your Vevox survey is complete, you’ll want to retrieve the data you’ve gathered. Head to the Data section in the left menu, where you can easily download all the data in an Excel spreadsheet for further analysis. 

    For detailed instructions on what information you can extract from Vevox, check out the guide on Accessing My Session Data for Surveys. This makes it simple to review and analyse your results! 

    My Top Tips!  

    • It’s a good idea to include the session ID in your lecture slides and share them before the lecture begins.
    • Allow a few minutes for students to get familiar with Vevox, especially if it’s their first time using it.
    • While it may seem obvious, explaining the purpose of the quiz and how it ties into the lesson often boosts student engagement and participation.
    • Although Vevox can be integrated into PowerPoint presentations we have found it easier to show the Vevox Presenter View screen

    Resources


  • Quick Ways to Improve the Student Experience

    Improving the student experience, including their experience of organisation and management, is very important.

    Student feedback shows there are a few things that they would appreciate from your Blackboard areas. In this post we show how you could make some quick changes that would help students.

    1. Identify the module leader clearly.

    If a number of staff have access to your Blackboard area, you can still ensure it is clear who the actual module leader is. The Display the Module Leader to Students (0:35) video shows you how to do this by adding a ‘Primary Instructor’.

    The Course Staff area of the Courses tab, with a module leader with no profile picture.

    2. Include a module leader image.

    You can upload a profile picture in Blackboard, so that you don’t appear as a grey face. This profile picture appears in various contexts throughout Blackboard such as the Course Staff area, and the Discussion tool. Watch the Adding a Profile Image to Blackboard (0:38) video, and add one now. This only needs doing once and the image will be seen in all Blackboard areas.

    Course Staff section where the module leader has uploaded a profile image.

    3. Organise Content

    Name content clearly and consistently. This will allow students to browse or search for items.

    Blackboard 'Search' box. The word Lecture has been searched for, giving six possible results.

    Use Learning Modules to organise content. These allow students to easily navigate content. Use a consistent naming convention such as ‘Week One: Topic Name’, ‘Week Two: Topic Name’, etc.

    Include descriptions to give students context, and reasons to explore further.

    Explore organisation of your content in more detail by watching a recorded version of Carol Chatten’s ‘Organising Content in Blackboard‘ session (~28 minutes).

    4. Make session details more visible.

    You could make session details more visible by adding the timetable to the top of the page, and add the key details to the title, and description.

    A timetable document with the key details in the title, and information about how students should expect updates in the description.

    For very basic course timetables it is possible to put time, date, and location of sessions in the Course Schedule feature. The Course Schedule Feature in Blackboard (1:23) shows how this works. Note that this doesn’t take ‘reading weeks’/weeks-off into consideration, and will still create Blackboard calendar entries for those weeks.

    The Course Schedule area, showing time, date and location of sessions.

    5. Make contact details more visible.

    You could include your contact details in the description for your ‘Information’ Learning Module.

    An 'Information' Learning Module containing the module leader's email in the description.

    Some people like to add text to their course images/banners, and some have included email addresses on these. We have a video guide and a template that you can use to help you add text to the image without sections of it being cut off for some users. Remember that text added this way can be too small and so not accessible (particularly on mobile devices) so we do not recommend doing this. As with all online images alternative text should be added when they are added to Blackboard for those who use assistive software like screen readers.


  • Blackboard September 6th 2024 Updates

    The September updates to Blackboard will introduce several significant improvements that will benefit academics, students, and course administrators. These updates focus on enhancing instructional design, improving the course content page, and supporting learner progression.

    Course Content Page Enhancements

    As a result of staff and student feedback Blackboard have introduced some changes to the appearance of the Course Content Page.

    The updated Content Page now features several design changes: the Details and Actions menu has been moved to the right-hand side, extra space has been added around the course banner, and images now have rounded edges with a subtle drop shadow effect. The + button menu has been relocated to the left-hand side, and the icons have been made smaller for a cleaner look.  The changes look particularly appealing when a course makes use of Learning Modules images and descriptions which is best practice.

    • Moving the menu to the right ensures that the course content is the first thing students will look at.
    • Greater visual distinction between learning modules and folders.
    • Intuitive navigation reduces cognitive load and increases focus on the content.
    Course Content page visual depth improvements
    Image 1: Student View of Course Content page visual depth improvements

    For further guidance see Course Content Page Enhancements

    Content Designer: Knowledge Check in Documents

    Further to the recent update to the Content Designer for Documents, the latest addition to enhance the learning experience is a knowledge check block.  Add a multiple choice or multiple answer questions with pre-populated correct and incorrect feedback.  Students then receive immediate feedback and have unlimited attempts at completing the questions.

    Academics can get detailed metrics including:

    • Number of students participating & total number of attempts.
    • Average & maximum number of attempts to reach the correct answer 
    • Level of difficulty metric 
    • Percentage of students selecting each answer option.

    For further guidance see Create Documents

    View items that “Need marking” and “Need posting” in the new Overview tab

    In the gradebook tab you will notice there is a new Overview tab containing two sections: Needs Marking and Needs Posting.

    Needs Marking allows you to see all items ready for marking and a count of the total number of outstanding marking tasks in your course.

    Late submissions will also be included in the Needs Marking section of the Gradebook.

    Needs Posting allows you to quickly identify which grades need posting (Only use this if you want to post immediately, you can ignore this if you have set a feedback release date).

    Image 5: Instructor view of the new gradebook Overview page where the Needs Marking and Needs posting sections appear

    View a Student Activity Log

    To review student activity on a particular course the Student Overview page now has a Student Activity Log.  Academics/course administrators** can use the report to check what a particular student did in a course.

    The easiest way to access Student Activity Log is from the Gradebook.  Opening the Students tab and clicking on a student’s name will open the Student Overview page.  From there you will notice the Activity Log tab.

    The Activity Log can be filtered by different event types and displays data from the past 140 days. Any information older than 140 days is not stored in the log. Additionally, it may take up to 20 minutes for the log to update after a student performs an action.

    student activity log displays data from the past 140 days.
    Image 6: Student activity log report located in the student overview page

    ** Programme Module (PM) Leader, PM Tutor, PM Administrator, Course Builder roles have the permission to view this info.

    For further guidance see Student Activity Log


Categories