Giving students a voice in Blackboard policy and practice development

Elizabeth Symonds

Team Leader – Learning and Teaching Technology Unit

University of Worcester1

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Background

• Changing the Learning Landscape programme

• Strategic conversation with students highlighted inconsistency in the use of Blackboard across and within Academic Institutes

• Two SAP projects carried out to evaluate student opinions on the use of Blackboard

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Qualitative research – Institute of Health

• Focus groups for students run by students

• 6 focus groups across a range of subject areas

• Used examples of Blackboard sites to promote discussion on what worked and what didn’t

• Used thematic framework analysis to draw out key themes

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Key themes identified

• Content

• Organisation and structure

• Navigation

• Personalisation and mobile access

• Timeliness

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Content

• “Some lecturers seem to be more consistent than others”

• “lot of information… when you first start it was quite difficult to see where everything was on the homepage… a lot of that information wasn’t really relevant”

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Organisation and Structure

• “…folder inside folder inside folder so that you’re clicking 30 times before you’re getting to the document you want”

• “organised into different categories… I think I’ve seen some lecturers who do it amazingly – I don’t need to sort of faff”

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Navigation

• “I really like how all the different modules have their own section and each semester is also broken down further – really allows me to find the relevant information I am looking for”

• “I hate having to look through every single folder and subheading to try and find the lecture or relevant bit of information then it turning out the lecturer hasn’t even put it up”

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Personalisation and mobile access

• “opportunity to change it – I’d like to be able to hide my old modules”

• “the Blackboard app is really good - it gives me notifications so instead of having to log into my uni portal, or go through the student page, open Blackboard and then look, actually I just get, it flashes up on my screen and I can go straight to it.”

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Timeliness

• “Best lecturer in my first year gave us the PowerPoint slides along with quizzes and additional resources to test yourself before and after the lecture and additional reading around the subject”

• “Resources are put on after the lecture which doesn’t help me as I would rather print off the slides and use in the lecture”

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Quantitative Research – Dr Duncan Westbury

• Student evaluators scored Blackboard sites against a range of criteria

• An index of site complexity was calculated

• Course reports showed time students spent in the course

• Students’ final grade recorded

• Questionnaire to ascertain the importance of Blackboard to students

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Findings

• Significant positive correlation between site quality and average time students spent on site

• Significant relationship between site quality and student performance

• Students completing the questionnaire believed that Blackboard enhanced their learning

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Conclusion

• Much of the feedback from students was positive

• Consistency was a key issue across all groups

• Consistency and structure are fundamental to student usability of Blackboard

• The potential for Blackboard as a learning tool is strongly influenced by the quality, relevance and importance of material made available

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Outcomes

• Completely revised help materials for students

• A revised module template based on student feedback is being applied to all modules from September 2015

• A set of threshold standards drawn up based on the course template providing in-built help materials to support staff

• Presentations delivered to all academic institutes promoting and explaining the rationale for introducing standards

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University of Worcester Baseline Standards

• Link to standards

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Thanks for listening

• Any questions?