XplanaZine

Well, even if Blackboard’s website and its Academic Web Resources don’t offer instructors much help or inspiration in using Blackboard, there are fortunately some other websites you can go to - and I’ll start with the Blackboard services at Wytheville Community College, where you can access a Blackboard Quiz Generator online. This invaluable tool, created and run by David Carter-Tod (of Serious Instructional Technology fame) allows you to type your questions in “normal” question format, many questions at a time, and then import them in one fell swoop into Blackboard. When I needed to create 15 Latin vocabulary quizzes with 40 questions each last spring, I made very good use of this quiz generator - as do literally hundreds of people every day, who rely on this free online service to make it easier for them to create question pools in Blackboard. There are also a variety of scripts for Blackboard instructors and administrators that can facilitate other tedious Blackboard tasks, such as a nifty little bookmarklet for assigning the same point value to all questions on a quiz.
Now, I don’t know why Blackboard did not build this data entry method into their Assessment Manager to begin with. The commercial software package, Respondus, offers this same functionality - but it will set you back $79 (that’s the academic discount price). Admittedly, Respondus has all kinds of features not found at Carter-Tod’s Blackboard Quiz Generator - but for my purposes, his free online service has met my needs perfectly.
Another nice stash of Blackboard technical assistance can be found at the University of Bristol Blackboard Support site. There are some very special handouts here! I first stumbled across this site when looking for some hints on Adding an RSS Feed to a Blackboard Course (and I got it to work in Blackboard 5.5, which my university is harnessed to for another academic year to come).
Unfortunately, one of the biggest gaps for new faculty using Blackboard is not the lack of support material - it is the lack of a good demonstration course where there can see an example of Blackboard at work. Most faculty members who are asked to teach with Blackboard have probably never been inside a Blackboard course - and because of the way Blackboard works, you are unlikely to be able to see inside someone else’s Blackboard course unless a demonstration course has been set up that you can access.
The question is: where? Does anybody know of a good demonstration course, with Course Documents and Web Site links, a functioning Discussion Board, Assignments and Assessments…? With comments by the instructor about how they use Blackboard… and comments by the students about how they use Blackboard? The Learning Place (Queensland) has some very nice demonstration courses that you can look at, which contain materials from real courses. One course - “Source to Sea” by Helen Penridge - comes with an accompanying article that gives you some insight into the goals and strategies that help explain the way that the materials were developed in Blackboard.
Are there any other examples of rich Blackboard demonstration courses out there? Where you can learn about the choices the instructors are making, their reasons for making those choices, and the reactions of the students to the course? Click the “Discuss” button (top of page) to add your comments - I’m sure they are out there… somewhere…