Michael D. Corry

Tool:

Blackboard

Benefits for Faculty:

• Easy to get your materials online and have a very full-blown course online.
• Course statistics are useful, as well, as faculty can see in Blackboard how many hours students spend in a specific area of the course.
• Blackboard allows for customization of the course menu and can create a common interface for courses within a program or department.
  

Benefits for Students:

• Allows students to post messages online, synchronously through the chatroom or asynchronously through the discussion boards.
• Provides a rich and flexible learning environment:

  "For example, students...can benefit from what Blackboard allows faculty to do. [When the faculty add] rich resources to Blackboard which include streaming video, streaming audio, lectures, assignments, [. . .] the students’ rights can become more flexible. Students may not be able to be on campus at the appointed time. More flexibility is possible because lectures can be accessed at any time."
  

Teaching Tips:

"Don’t assume that you can take your written notes and put them online in Blackboard and be done. There is so much more to a class online. You need to remember that the greater the percentage of your class that is online, the more time you are going to have to spend online doing things like student support, community building, helping students to feel that they are not isolated. If you have a small percentage of your materials online, you can do more of that work which naturally occurs within the classroom. If there’s one thing that most students fear, it is that they are going to be left alone and that there’s going to be no one around to support them. They are going to feel like they don’t have anyone to turn to, that there’s no community. It takes quite a bit of work to be effective ... in online instruction. Students demand very quick turnaround in an online environment, everyone wants individual feedback."