Notes from the Blackboard Mobile Users' Group meeting

cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo shared by sharonlflynn

The Blackboard Mobile User Group met on Monday afternoon, 7th January, as part of the 13th Durham Blackboard Users' Conference. The meeting was organised by Peter Rayment, Learning Technology Manager at Cardiff University, and attended by about 20 people from higher education around the UK. I was the only person from an Irish institution.

The meeting took place in the impressive new Palatine Centre (see picture), which houses the Law School at Durham University.

We started by going round the room, each person giving a brief introduction and describing the current status of Blackboard Mobile (Learn and/or Central) at his/her institution.

We launched Mobile Learn at NUI Galway at the end of March 2012, at the end of teaching and just 4 weeks before the start of exams. With a promising initial take-up, we were interested to monitor its use during the teaching semester starting in September 2012. Three weeks into term, the number of logins were looking good and this continued to increase over the semester. On the first day of teaching in the current semester (Monday 7th January) there were more than 2.3K logins on Mobile Learn.

Going round the room at the user group meeting, different institutions were at different stages with Mobile Learn. Only a few had more experience than NUIG, with many having just launched or about to launch. The number who have implemented Mobile Central was much lower. I was interested to hear that a couple of institutions have their students paying for the Learn app through a personal licence, rather than having an institutional licence.

Julie Usher, Solutions Engineer with Blackboard Mobile, and formerly at the University of Northampton, gave an overview of recent developments and where the products are going.

• Blackboard Mobile is ceasing support on Blackberry devices for Mobile Central only. 
• 14 languages are now supported within both Mobile Learn and Mobile Central. This is particularly useful for international students.
• The Software Development Kit (SDK) for Mobile Central is now open for partner developments. More details about the SDK are available on the website.
• New documentation is available on the Blackboard Mobile website, including a new implementation guide for mobile central, best practices for mobile friendly courses, and client case studies.

With Mobile Learn 4.0, coming soon, we can look forward to a new user interface, to be built from scratch. This will include improved content handling, and a cleaner, clutter-free interface (no more corkboard on the iPad app). It will include a better display of grades and information for instructors about item availability. It will be possible to jump to a bookmarked part of a course and the course list management will be improved. All this will be ready by summer, ready for the 2013 student intake.

Blackboard Mobile will also revisit analytics. Currently, it's possible to monitor number of logins at different times of the day, and what devices are being used, but we can't see what activities are taking place. Are students just using the app as a notification device or are they actually engaging with content? More detailed information would be very useful.

The meeting then moved on to a discussion of issues and questions from the various institutions.

Mobile Tests:  there are now two separate test editors, one specifically for Mobile Learn. Existing Blackboard tests are not necessarily suitable for Mobile, but it should be easier to identify problem questions and have an easier way to convert for Mobile.

Support for Mobile Learn:  help enquiries from Mobile Learn go directly through to Blackboard. Some members of the group expressed the preference that these should be routed through the organisation first. From the NUIG perspective, we are quite happy that requests for help with the mobile applications are handled by Blackboard, but it would be interesting to have information about the number and type of requests. In fact, I suspect these are quite low.

Engaging Staff with Mobile: in response to a questions about how we cab encourage staff to engage with Mobile Learn, and to make content more suitable for mobile delivery, we were pointed to the best practices document on the website. We also heard from Alex Spiers about staff development sessions at Liverpool John Moores University, specifically on this topic, which have been successful. This prompted me to think that we haven't really been pushing mobile at NUIG, and maybe it's time to start thinking about this.

Asking Students about their use of the Apps:  Finally, coming back to the issue of analytics, there was an observation that we don't know enough about how students are using Mobile Learn. Maybe they just use it to notify them when new content is available. If we can collect more information on this it will be possible to advocate where it is appropriate for use, or to target particular groups of students!

The next meeting of the Blackboard Mobile Users' Group will be online, with a gathering organised as part of the Blackboard Europe Conference in Birmingham in April.

[Update on 22 January 2013] We ran a quick survey on our Blackboard login page, asking students about how they use the Mobile Learn app. The survey was available for a week and we got a great response. The results are available on our dedicated blackboardnuigalway blog.

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Using Video to Break Down Learning Barriers

Following on from last week's webinar, I'm very pleased to see the publication of a Blackboard/Kaltura case study on how we are using Kaltura at NUI Galway.

I'd particularly like to acknowledge Oliver Ryan (Physics) and Susan Folan (Acadamh) for their contributions to the case study.

Read the full case study to find out how Oliver and Susan have been using Kaltura to support their students' learning.

We have also been featured recently on the Blackboard blog, in a nice write up by Katie Drossos.

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Kaltura on Blackboard at NUI Galway

I am very pleased to participate in this afternoon's webinar, hosted by Blackboard, on how we are using the Kaltura building block for video at NUI Galway.

Here are the slides that I'm going to be presenting with:



To find out more about Kaltura at NUI Galway, take a look at our Blackboard blog. Our guide for instructor users describing the Kaltura building block can be found on our Blackboard support site.


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Embedded twitter timelines in Blackboard

This week, I've been preparing for the start of our Learning Technologies module - offered to academic staff as part of our Higher Diploma in Academic Practice at NUI Galway. I have blogged, in the past, about the wonderful work carried out by participants on the module, and we have done some initial investigations into the longer term impact of the module.

Using the old twitter embed code

Twitter is just one of the many tools we use as part of the module, both to support communication between participants, and for them to reflect on how they might make use of it in their own teaching practice. Since we also use Blackboard as our VLE, it's useful to bring the course twitter feed into the Blackboard course, to help link various strands together.

In the past, embedding a twitter feed was not straightforward, but was certainly possible. A quick google search would bring up instructions, and allowed us to produce some nice results (see image).

So, I was really delighted to see that just last Friday, Twitter have announced a new way to embed timelines, making it easier to embed a public twitter stream into a webpage. The old embed codes will no longer work from March 2013.




Since I was already working on my Blackboard course for the current year, I thought I'd give it a try.

Step 1: When logged into twitter.com, go to your settings page and select Widgets from the left menu bar.

Step 2: Click Create New, to create and configure a new timeline widget.

Step 3: Choose a timeline source. In my case, I want to search for course related tweets, using the #cel263 tag. I leave everything else at the defaults. The preview is looking good so far!

Step 4: List the domains where this widget will be embedded. I use the domain for this blog, and also the domain for blackboard (which is on a secure server).

Step 5: Click on Create widget. Success, my widget has been created and I just have to copy the embed code!

Step 6: Now, in my Blackboard course, I create a new item and paste the embed code into it. I'm done!

Except that this wasn't really what I was expecting...a rather disappointing "Tweets about..." link.

Clicking on the link will open a new page, but produces a Blackboard error message.

It's not particularly elegant!

When I first encountered the problem, I tweeted about it. I've had a couple of replies from other people experiencing the same issue.

Anybody else having problems with new twitter embedded timelines in Blackboard? bit.ly/OmRuEi
— Sharon Flynn (@sharonlflynn) September 6, 2012

I also posted on the Official Timeline Questions blog, but to date have seen no reply.

Has anybody figured this out? Please let me know. For the moment, I'm sticking with the old embed code.

21 September 2012: Update

Hooray! The embedded twitter widget is now working for me. The problem, it appears, was with secure sites (https) but a fix has been implemented. Now, what I see when I insert the code is much, much nicer.

31 January 2013: Update

In response to a couple of queries, I didn't implement the fix, I presume Twitter did. The one change I did make in the narrative above is in the list of domains at step 4. This now looks like:

I don't know how important the last *.blackboard.com is, but it might make all the difference!


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New Blackboard support site

Today we are very pleased to announce the launch of our new Blackboard help website. This site brings together useful documentation and resources on using Blackboard at NUI Galway. It can be found at the following location: www.nuigalway.ie/blackboard

Based on user feedback about our existing support site and on support calls and requests since the upgrade to Blackboard 9.1 last Summer, we have completely redesigned the website and developed new materials to help you find the answers to your most asked questions. The resources are grouped into categories, to help you navigate quickly to the required resource, and an A-Z of help topics is also available. It is also possible to use the Quick Search facility to jump straight to a topic.

We hope you'll agree that the new site is tidier and easier to use. We will continue to develop resources for this area, based on common queries and requests. If you have any comments or suggestions for the new website, please get in contact.

As we launch our new site, we are also introducing a new Blackboard @ nuigalway blog, at http://blackboardnuigalway.wordpress.com/ to coincide. The learning technologies team in CELT intend to use this blog to post regular updates and announcements, as well as quick tips and tricks to support and improve your experience with Blackboard. Our intention is that the blog will be a dynamic space for the Blackboard community at NUI Galway and we hope that you'll bookmark and follow our updates. Comments are especially welcome.

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Threshold standards for Blackboard courses: Innovation Prevention?

Image: Simon Howden / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

At the Durham Blackboard users' conference last month, there was a panel discussion on threshold standards for VLE courses: whether we should have them; at what level; and what they should include. Others have written about the discussion including Julian Beckton's excellent blog post and Matt Cornock's summary.

Here are my thoughts on the issue of threshold standards  for Blackboard courses at NUIG.

Since Blackboard went mainstream in 2007, we have never required that academic staff use Blackboard to support their teaching. We make it easy for them to use, authentication is via ldap so no new userids or passwords have to be remembered, the courses are created and ready for use, the students are automatically enrolled in the correct courses, we provide training and support. Uptake has been massive, with very few staff not using Blackboard and, I estimate, very few students who don't have resources (at some level) available to them on Blackboard. So why would we need threshold (minimum) standards?

For a start, we couldn't enforce such requirements. Every single module code on our records, whether active, defunct or redundant, has a corresponding Course created on Blackboard. So, we have a huge number of Bb courses, many of which are empty. Moreover, we have no central system that records who is responsible for what module code. So instructor associations with Bb courses is still largely a manual process. Who would be responsible for a non-conforming or empty Blackboard course?

Blackboard is used to support teaching in different ways at NUIG. For distance and blended learning, Blackboard is central to teaching and learning activities. For primarily face-to-face teaching, Blackboard might just be used to provide administrative information, with readings and lecture notes. There is a whole spectrum of potential use between these two points. The important thing is to focus on the teaching and learning and to use Blackboard ( or other appropriate tools) to support these activities.

I can understand the point about consistency for students, so that there is a standard way for students to access materials. It is true that some Blackboard courses are very disorganised, with documents thrown into folders, using a mix of formats and no logical thinking behind any of it. I would suggest though, that what is needed is good signposting, and some thinking and planning on the part of the instructor on the course. After all, we don't dictate minimal standards for other teaching tools: minimal requirements for PowerPoint slides; the threshold form of a 1 hour lecture; standard teaching methods. But we do expect that these elements are organised and planned.

What of innovative, creative and effective course designs that don't fit into the standard template? Do we run the risk of having people subvert the requirements, making organisation more confusing for students, or driving the innovators out of the VLE altogether? Are threshold standards for the VLE an invention of the Innovation Prevention Department (IPD)?

At the School or Programme level, it may well be worth considering a standard, but flexible, Bb course structure. This is particularly true where distance or blended learners are involved.

Course information, learning outcomes, reading lists, staff details, handbooks, timetables, assessment information, are all examples of information that should be available to students. The VLE is an excellent place for them, but there may be other, more suitable distribution methods. The requirement is that they are provided somehow, not that they are all contained in Blackboard.

Returning to the image of the VLE as a Trojan horse; at NUIG Blackboard is an easy first step into using technologies to support teaching. I believe that by imposing minimal required standards on Blackboard courses we would be creating an impediment, giving lecturers a reason to reject the VLE completely.

There are other things we can do to encourage better use of Blackboard. For example, each course is created with a standard menu, including menu items for Course Information, Learning Outcomes, Feedback. This is a reminder that these elements are expected, though many staff just ignore them. We can also put together guidelines and recommendations for effective Blackboard courses, in a non-threatening, non-judgemental way. See, for example, Leeds University's 10 Tips for improving a Blackboard course.

So, in CELT, let's continue in our role as guides, supporting academics in their use of Blackboard, and avoid becoming the VLE wing of the IPD.

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Testing: Kaltura for Blackboard

I'm currently engaged in testing out Kaltura, a platform for video, as part of a 3 year extended pilot at NUI Galway. It has a rather nice integration with Blackboard, which we're hoping to launch within the next few weeks. If any members of staff are using or creating their own video and are interested in being part of an initial pilot study in the next few months, please get in contact with me.

For the moment, I'm testing the embed feature. So, here's a short video recorded during our guerilla video workshop with the participants in the PG Cert in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education.

Using the VLE as a Trojan Horse

The Calman Learning Centre

Last week I travelled to Durham for the 2012 Blackboard Users' Conference. Coming immediately at the end of the Christmas/New Year break, it was a shock to the system, and a rude kick start to my brain. But I survived, and came away with my head buzzing. Now, if I can just get time to implement some of those ideas...

The two keynotes, in particular, got me thinking about training and support for our academic staff in their use of technologies for teaching and learning.  The learning technology team at CELT aims to provide pedagogical support for staff in their use of technology, although often we end up dealing with queries about user accounts and basic support for our VLE, Blackboard. Our mantra is that we want to encourage each member of staff, from their current technology use, to do something a little more. We always keep in mind that the teaching/learning is key, and we're just using the technology to (better) support it.

With this in mind, Gráinne Conole's (@gconole) metaphor of the VLE as theTrojan Horse makes perfect sense to me. Since we went mainstream with Blackboard almost 5 years ago, the uptake by staff members has been very positive. Encouraged by automatic enrolment of students in the correct courses, the possibility of easy communication (announcements, email) and demand from students themselves,  academics at NUI Galway have embraced the VLE, albeit (in some cases) with reluctance and/or trepidation.

We have a significant number of early-adopters, champions and people willing to experiment, and these people really keep us on our toes. But we also have a large group of staff who just use Blackboard as a repository, making minimal use of its functionality. Our challenge now is to use this as a basis to encourage them along and to try something new. Gráinne described the VLE as the "nursery slope" for academics: a safe and supported environment where they can learn the basics of technology for learning. But, how to do this when the average academic is already overworked and doesn't have time to even turn up for basic training?

The other image that I liked in Gráinne's keynote was the notion of the VLE+. It's no longer a case of the PLE vs VLE: we can extend our VLE with a myriad of extra functionality to support teaching and learning activities. This afternoon I met with our learning technologies team, to plan our activities for the next few months, and we discussed all of our Blackboard connectors which make up our VLE+. At the moment, the list includes: Campus Pack (Learning Objects); Turnitin; Echo360; QuestionMark; Kaltura. This all provides a seamless environment for staff and students - to the extent that all our support tickets say "Problem with Blackboard", when it's probably not a Blackboard issue at all.

Is this a bad thing? As raised by Nick Pearce (@drnickpearce) in his presentation Beyond Good and Evil, is "closed" necessarily evil?

Ray Land (now Professor of Higher Education at Durham University and Director of Durham’s Centre for Learning Teaching and Research in Higher Education), in his keynote addressed exactly this point. Higher Education is historically closed - with teaching taking place behind closed doors. The newer, digital world, challenges this; it challenges the authority of the academic and breaks down barriers. While there are some that embrace the digital world, for many academics, this represents "troublesome knowledge", and requires a change of culture. The digital world is constantly changing and evolving. For learning technologies, this means a new tool every day (at least) that could be used in teaching and learning. It's difficult, even for those of us who work in the area, to keep track of developments. The VLE is a way to contain that volatility, and slow things down.

Footbridge, Durham

In the same way that teachers will always have a role in leading students through a new landscape (while not necessarily being the source of all knowledge), our learning technologies team will have a role to play in leading academics through the fast paced, digital world, using the VLE+ as the safe and supported environment.

Up next, when I get a chance, some thoughts on the panel session around threshold, minimum standards for VLE courses.