Blackboard Instructor Handbook

Blackboard Instructor Handbook

Blackboard Instructor Handbook Blackboard Navigation Consistent Navigation

MSTC strives to make online courses as consistent as possible so that students have a familiar experience with each Blackboard course they take. The menus need to be consistent from class to class. Everything a student needs for learning is found in the Learning Plans. They don’t have to click between menu items to find everything they need for learning.

What Goes Where

Announcements – Announcements provide the instructor a forum for communicating with all students at once. The instructor may also send the announcement to the students’ email.

Learning Plans – Learning Plans are the content of the course.

Learning Plans are divided into week, unit, or chapter folders. The folder contains everything the student needs for learning.

Syllabus – Mid-State expects that ALL courses contain a syllabus and course calendar. It allows our students to have access to a digital copy of the syllabus from any Internet connected device. It also allows instructional supervisors to always have access to the syllabus if a student has a need and the instructor is unavailable.

Instructor Info – Mid-State expects every course to provide instructor info on Blackboard. Contact information and office hours are helpful for students who have questions or need assistance. Online and hybrid courses should also include a note with the turnaround time for getting back to the student. (24 hours during the week, 48 hours on weekends.)

Resources – Resources are extra pieces of information that may not be part of the learning but may be useful for some or all students. Examples of things that might go under resources are • • •

Professional Organizations or Articles for further learning or information Tutorial Websites Student to Student discussion boards not directly related to coursework

Microsoft Teams OR Blackboard Collaborate - Shortcut to the web-conferencing tool the class will use My Grades – Shortcut to the student grades for this class and their other classes Email – Shortcut to Email tool with access to the instructor and other class participant emails.

Learning Plan Organization What Goes in a Learning Plan

Everything a student needs for a particular week or unit should be placed into the Learning Plan folder for that week. Items should be placed in the order that the instructor prefers them to be completed to optimize the flow of student learning. With everything a student needs linked within learning plan, the student should not have to leave a learning plan to find anything, keeping the natural flow of learning intact.

Competencies and Objectives

Every learning plan should start with the competencies and objectives taught in that learning plan. Adult students find it important to know the goal of their learning. All activities within a learning plan should help students comprehend, practice, or assess the competencies and objectives listed. Competencies and objectives can be found in WIDS.

Learning Activity List

A list of learning activities will help students make sure they complete everything they are supposed to in the correct order for optimal learning. It becomes a completion checklist for the student.

Learning Cycle

Learning Activities

Comprehension activities to introduce new information.

Learning Activities can be anything such as reading a chapter, viewing a video, completing an assignment, participating in a discussion, taking a test, etc.

Learning activities should follow the learning cycle. The activities should be varied, interactive, and engaging. Online learners do not have the benefit of being in class with you, so activities need to mirror the information and interactions in the classroom.

Requirements for Student to Student Interaction

Motivation activity to activate prior knowledge or engage the student in learning.

Practice activities to give the student a chance to work with the new information with formative feedback.

Application activities to provide students the opportunity to apply the new information to real world/real work applications.

In online and hybrid courses frequent student to student and student to instructor interaction is required. It is not only a best practice for online learning required by MSTC, it is also a requirement by our accreditation body, the Higher Learning Commission. Interaction differentiates an online course from an independent study course.

Options for Interaction

Most interaction will happen via the discussion board, however, it is not limited to just discussions. Options for interaction include (but are not limited to): • • •

Blogs Journals Wikis

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Group Work Web 2.0 interactive tools Collaborative Documents (OneDrive)

The important thing to ask is, “Are students interacting with each other? Are students interacting with me? Are the students interacting with the content?”

Helpful Documents on the Instructor Resource Tab at the top of Blackboard.

Check the Blackboard sub-tab and the Teaching and Learning Resources sub-tab □ Folders > How to Create a Folder or an □ Blogs, Journals, Wikis > Add a Journal Item □ Blogs, Journals, Wikis > Add a Wiki □ Assignments > Creating Assignments □ Discussion Boards > Adding a Discussion □ Blogs, Journals, Wikis > Add a Blog Board

Instructor Expectations Stay Engaged

As an online instructor it is not only important to stay engaged in the course, it is required by accreditation guidelines. Login to the course multiple times per week and stay engaged with student emails and phone calls. You can subscribe to the discussion forums (you will get an email alert that shows the content of new forum information) if that will help you stay engaged without having to constantly log into the course.

Time Expectations for Answering Student Questions

It is Mid-State policy that instructors answer student questions within 24 hours during the week and 48 hours on the weekend. If you will have an extended period of time that you will not be available, it is important to let the students know. If you are unavailable, a good best practice is to set up a discussion forum for students that allows them to ask each other questions about content or assignments. In an online course, you are the lifeline – it is important to be available to keep them engaged.

Feedback and Turnaround time in Grading

Different assignments require different turnaround time in grading. In online courses feedback is vital to success. It is important to grade one assignment before the students completes the next assignment so they can adjust to your expectations. A lack of feedback will lead to less desirable results for you and the student.

If you are going to have an extended turnaround time due to the size of the assignment, make the group aware of that.

Grade Center Why Use Blackboard Grade Center

It is a policy at Mid-State that instructors use a grading system that allows students to keep track of their grades during the semester. Blackboard Grade Center is the only supported grade book application. Blackboard is backed up daily throughout the day providing stability and assurance that if anything goes wrong, student grades can be restored.

Set up Your Grade Book

If your class is online, then all of your grade columns will be set up automatically as you create assignments and interactions in Blackboard. If your class is face to face, any items not turned in through Blackboard will be added manually to the grade center. See the Blackboard Resources on The Source or Blackboard Help to learn the features of setting up your grade center. You can also make an appointment with EDC staff to set up the grade center for the first time. Once it is set up, it can be copied easily from semester to semester.

External Grade

In the full grade center you will notice a green checkmark above one of the columns. This is the external grade – the grade that the student sees for the course on their Blackboard home screen. The grade students see on their home screen should reflect their current status in the course. Assignments without grades are not calculated into the total until a grade or a zero is entered. If you are using weighted grades, you need to make sure the green checkmark is set to display the weighted column. To display a particular column, click on the dropdown menu next to the grade column heading you want displayed and choose “Set as External Grade”.

Using In-Line Grading

In-Line grading is a wonderful grading tool in Blackboard that allows the instructor to provide feedback directly on the assignment without any downloading or uploading to a personal computer.

Rubrics

Setting up rubrics in Blackboard will provide you with a very simple checkmark process of grading. You check the appropriate box on the rubric, the grade auto-tallies for you. Feedback to students can be provided within the context of the rubric.

Helpful Documents

In Blackboard, click on the Instructor Resources tab at the top of the screen.

Course Quality Checklist Online and hybrid courses at MSTC must meet a standard for quality. Each new course goes through a review process. The reviewed course then becomes the master course in Blackboard. This allows a new instructor to work with a developed course rather than starting from scratch. The basic structure of a course must stay the same, but instructors can swap out learning activities as desired as long as they continue to meet the quality standards. Consider the following standards when checking your course for quality: □ □ □

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Does the syllabus match the learning plans?

Are the learning plans divided into folders?

Does a single folder have all of the following: o Competencies and objectives for the learning plan o A list of learning activities o An item, link, or tool connected to each learning activity o Comprehensive instructions and grading criteria for assignments/assessments o Links to assessments as needed (students should not have to click on a separate folder for an assessment) Do the learning activities and assessments connect directly to the competencies and objectives? Are all competencies and objectives covered, practiced, and/or assessed?

Does the assessment match the content?

Are student activities varied to meet multiple learning styles?

Is there a performance assessment task that helps students show what they know (beyond a multiple choice test)?

Is the class designed for learners with disabilities? (Captions, text is readable by screen readers, white space is used effectively to overcome those with reading problems, etc.)

Are due dates clear not only in the course calendar, but on learning plans. If using Blackboard due dates for assignments, are they up to date? Use the Date Management tool under the Course Tools to see all due dates at one time.

Is the learning cycle used?

Housekeeping Beginning of Semester

Going through the checklist at the beginning of the semester will help ensure you and your students are on course with as few problems as possible. The course opens automatically to the students on the first day of class. This is a cursory list – view the Beginning and End of Semester Checklists on The Source for more details.

Announcements: □

Check your welcome announcements for dates and relevance

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Delete old announcements from the previous semester

Syllabus: □ □

Update the syllabus to the current semester If course calendar is separate from the syllabus, make sure it is updated.

Learning Plans: □ □ □ □

Set current open close dates on each folder (remember, if a folder is closed, so are all of the items inside, you do not need to set open/close dates on each item in the folder) Use the Date Management tool to change any embedded due dates Remove any adaptive releases you see from the past semester Use the link checker tool to ensure all links are in working order (this only works for Build Content Web Links, not hyperlinked options within text.)

Instructor Info: □ □ □

Change instructor info to reflect new semester office hours.

Make sure you indicate turnaround time for student questions.

Update your picture as needed. Pictures need to be 150x150 pixels to avoid skewing.

Grade Center: □ □ □ □

Delete duplicated total or weighted total columns Arrange Grade Center through Manage > Column Organization to reflect the way you and your students want to see the grades Check weighted total columns to ensure they reflect the addition of new assignments, tests, etc.

Clean out old assignments and columns no longer in use. Check with an instructional technology staff member if assistance is needed.

Discussion Board: Instructor Resources Tab > Discussion Boards for information about cleaning out the old conversations. □ Edit each Forum to show Needs Grading in the Grade Center after x number of posts □ Make sure your personal welcome discussion is still up to date and relevant. □ Change your old copied discussion posts from anonymous to your name.

Microsoft Teams: □

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Update the link to the Team for this course. Click on the drop down menu next to Teams in the menu, click on weblink, paste the new link to the Team for this semester.

End of Semester

You do not have to start over each semester. Courses can be copied between semesters. You can request a course copy at any time but watch your email for optimum dates and times to get a course copied. □ □ □

Download the Grade Center Archive the course Request Course Copies for next semester

Understanding the Course Numbers in Blackboard Each semester you will see the Blackboard courses for the previous semester, the current semester, and halfway through the semester, next semesters courses will appear. This can be a little confusing if you don’t understand the numbering system in Blackboard.

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The catalog number will stay consistent throughout semesters. The catalog number is an 8 digit number that typically starts with a 10 or 30, 31, or 32 based on whether it is a degree course or a diploma course. All courses by the same title share a catalog number The Blackboard course ID number is a 9 digit number with an underscore and two additional numbers (indicating instruction mode). This number is unique to your class.

Courses can be hidden and unhidden at any time by clicking on the settings icon that appears when you mouse over the My Courses heading on your Blackboard home page.

Blackboard Help The functionality in Blackboard changes too quickly and too often to create how to’s in a published book.

However we have many online resources to help you build your course in Blackboard using the expectations from above.

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Blackboard Help o Click on the “?” in the global navigation menu o Use the SaaS version of Blackboard o (or) http://help.blackboard.com/ Instructor Resources Tab in Blackboard o Look through modules for the topic you need.

Hoonuit/Infobase o Login to Blackboard o Click on Hoonuit on the home page or tutoring and support page o Search for Blackboard Note that the Mid-State may have different navigation options than the videos show. Most of the time you will be able to easily spot the differences.

Contact the EDC if you need clarification on any point.