• Campus Pack Awareness Sessions: more than just an ePortfolio

    Over the past few months we have been evaluating Campus Pack: a powerful ‘building block’ to further extend the potential of Learning Edge. It offers all students a personal area where they can create blogs, wikis, journals and podcasts, and allows us to build templates for things like CVs, ePortfolios, and PDP.

    As students own the content within their environments, they have full control over who can view and edit – they can choose to share elements with colleagues across the University, as well as externals such as mentors in work placements and even potential employers. Viewers/collaborators then have the ability Rating tool in Campus Pack to leave comments, discuss and ‘rate’ items; offering exciting opportunities for ongoing feedback and dialogue.

    Other interesting features include the capability for tutors to embed Campus Pack content directly within their courses, and where necessary, link these to the Grade Centre for assessment. There is also the potential for mobile access to Campus Pack, which will add further flexibility to learners.

    We are holding a number of awareness-raising sessions over the coming weeks – it is envisaged that the range of options through Campus Pack will be of interest to colleagues across the University, with direct benefits to teaching and learning, as well other areas such as Careers and Learning Services.

    These sessions provide opportunity for staff across the University to give us direct feedback, and influence any decision regarding the purchase of a license. Please get involved, it would be great to see and hear from as many staff as possible.

    Tuesday 24th May – 12:00 – 1:00 (SOLSTICE Green Room)

    Thursday 26th May – 12:00 – 1:00 (H203)

    Wednesday  1st June – 1:00 – 2:00 (SOLSTICE Red Room)

    Sign up for one of the sessions here – http://campuspack.eventbrite.com/

     

    If you are interested in Campus Pack and want to learn more about mobile access, contact Peter Reed ([email protected], #7756) for details about an upcoming webinar on Tuesday 24th May

  • Blackboard 9.1 Academic Staff Development Launches in FAS

    Following on from recent work preparing the departmental administration teams to use Blackboard, we have now started working with the academic staff in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences to prepare them for the upgrade.

    The process has begun with face-to-face sessions being delivered to each department with the aim of making sure everyone can do basic tasks on the new version. These sessions will be followed by continued support and resources covering aspects of using the Virtual_learning_environment and the wider Learning Edge system, in more detail.

    The exact nature of the ongoing support will be tailored to each department’s needs, and will include guidance on areas such as course handbooks, online assignment submission, and using audio and video for teaching and learning.

    The FAS development programme will be provided to over 150 academic staff, and include about 12 sessions running from May onwards.

    Peter

  • Blackboard 9.1, behind the login page…

    We’ve talked about data systems integration, staff development activity and the imminent “people systems integration”, but what can students expect to find on the other side of the login page?

    Bb9.1 My Institution screen capture

    Once logged in, Blackboard 9.1 provides an instant overview of each course a student is enrolled on and any related announcements or upcoming events. Students can customise the look and content of this page to make it their own. There is also a range of tools they can draw on to help manage their learning, for example planning study in Calendars and Tasks, checking results in My Grades or building a directory of useful contacts in the Address Book.

    Tutors can change which page students see on entering a course.  The default is the course Home Page, a “dashboard” which summarises the status of the course from the individual student’s perspective …

    Bb9.1 Course Home Page screen capture

    … however, tutors can set the Module Content, Discussions or any other course page as the starting point to fit with course delivery at any time.

    There are many technologies that can be used to support learning, and back in December we talked about the wide range that LearningEdge embraces. Some of these are part of Blackboard 9.1, while others are separate “plugged in” applications. In either case they can be accessed seamlessly via the Tools page.

    Bb9.1 Course Tools screen capture

    These tools give tutors a wide range of learning support methods including:

    • On-line assignment submission (including TurnItIn)
    • Blogs, wikis and personal journals
    • Access to the eShare repository (coming soon)
    • Course content creation tools

    Over the coming weeks we’ll be taking a closer look at some of these, their benefits to students, and how good practice developed in Blackboard CE8 can be transferred and built on in 9.1.

    Mark

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