Smart Views

Smart Views in the Blackboard Grade Center allow you to customize your view based on categories, grades, specific items, by student, and many other options. Smart Views is also a tool that can be setup to view assignments/assessments based on Student Learning Outcomes. Once a view is setup for each outcome it can be downloaded and analyzed. The downloaded report goes to an Excel spreadsheet that allows for analysis of each SLO.

How to create a Smart View for a specific set of columns in your grade center (E.g. Student Learning Outcomes):

1. Go into the Full Grade Center under the Grade Center area of the course menu.
2. Point to the Mange tab at the top of the Grade Center and select Smart Views.
3. Click Create Smart View tab.
4. Give the Smart View a name (e.g. SLO A)
5. Type of Description if needed.
6. Under Type turn on the Add as Favorite if you wish to see this view in your course menu under the Grade Center list.
7. Type of View turn on User View individual users.
8. Under Select Criteria select “All Users”.
9. Under Filter Results select “Selected Columns Only”. This will display all the column names from your grade center.
   1. To select certain columns click on the first name you want from the list and hold down the CTRL key and select each additional column you want in this smart view.
10. Click Submit when done.
    (Videos Below)

To View the new Smart view:

1. If you turned on the Add to Favorites you will see the new name listed in the course menu under Grade Center.
2. If you did not add it to Favorites go to the Smart Views menu and you will see a list of all Smart Views available in the course. Just click on the name of the item you want to see.

Resources:

Blackboard Help on Smart Views

Blackboard Learn Grade Center – Smart Views

• Building a Smart View to Separate Sections in a Merged Course
• Building a Smart View to Display Columns Based on Categories
• Building a Smart View for Displaying Specific Columns (e.g. SLO)

    By Donna Simiele

As the costs continue to rise in higher education it is important to explore new Open Education Resources to use in today’s classrooms. We have added 2 new OERs to our blog.  To view a more visit the NCCC eLearning Faculty Support Center OER page.

Boundless
Boundless improves education for millions of students and educators through educational resources powered by cloud technology. With content created by a community of educators, who work side-by-side with subject-matter experts, Boundless provides ready-to-use online content, study materials, and assessment items to make teaching more efficient and learning more effective. The company has raised nearly $10 million in venture funding and reaches more than 3 million students and educators.

OpenStax
It’s innovation in education. And the time is right. OpenStax College offers students free textbooks that meet scope and sequence requirements for most courses. These are peer-reviewed texts written by professional content developers. Adopt a book today for a turnkey classroom solution or modify it to suit your teaching approach. Free online and low-cost in print, OpenStax College books are built for today’s student budgets.

If you are thinking about implementing a new tool in your online, hybrid, or web enhanced courses take a look at Tools of Engagement Project (TOEP).

“TOEP provides a focused venue to expand tech-infused pedagogy and provides an online community of peer mentors to share experiences and ideas.” This site provides examples of free online tools, how they are used and how they can be implemented into your courses.  For More Information go to the TOEP Website.

Discovery Activities

• Lifelong Learning
• Audio
• Blogs and Wikis
• Citation Management
• Mobile Apps
• Photo Sharing
• Presentations
• Productivity Tools
• Social Bookmarking
• Social Media
• Video
• Other Tools

We have had great success with adding a START HERE content area to our courses in Blackboard.  The Start Here content area should list the steps needed to begin an online or hybrid course (Example Below).  This document helps students that don’t read the opening announcement, are new to Blackboard, are new to an online or hybrid courses, and many other reasons. Here is a video on how to add this to your Blackboard course.

Welcome to OFT10 – Keyboarding on the Personal Computer!

This course officially starts on Jan 20th.  Only “Course Information” Documents will be available before March 26th.  You can prepare for this course by following the steps below.

1. If you are new to Blackboard please take the time to go through the Open SUNY Student Orientation.  This orientation can be found on the “My Institution” or “Resources & Policies” pages.

2. Go into the “Course Info & Schedule” menu:
–  Complete the “Academic Integrity Policy” – IMPORTANT!! This is a Mandatory assignment.
–  Read through the “Course Information/Syllabus”
–  Print the “Course Schedule”

3. Purchase your book

4. Add my email (*****@niagaracc.suny.edu) to your contacts list.

5. Add my phone number (614-****) to your cell phone.

6. Go into the “Learning Modules (Content)” menu and start work on the Icebreaker!

Note:  Always check Course Announcements and your T-Wolves mail for information about this course.  I will use email to send reminders and other important course information.

Item Analysis Using Rubrics in Blackboard

Many faculty have found that using rubrics for grading:

1. Provide students with a clear understanding of expectations.
2. Communicate specific and immediate feedback.
3. Provide faculty with impartial grading.

I would like to provide you with one more reason to use rubrics in Blackboard. The Rubric Evaluation Report provides faculty with an analysis to assess the outcome of an assignment/discussion. This report communicates the overall assessment as well as a breakdown by row within the rubric. If the rubric is built properly this report will allow faculty to evaluate student progress for course Student Learning Outcomes. (Example Report Below)

How to Run a Rubric Evaluation Report (Video)

A rubric evaluation report provides a comprehensive report of statistics for an item that you graded with a rubric. If you want to evaluate a rubric or its use in your course, you can run the report at any point in the grading process.

1. On the Control Panel, expand the Course Tools section and select Rubrics.
2. Access the rubric’s contextual menu and select View Associated Content.
3. If you already used an item for grading, a contextual menu is available next to the item’s name on the View All Items page. Point to the item’s contextual menu and select Rubric Evaluation Report.
4. On the Run Reports page, select a Format, Start Date, and End Date.
5. Click Submit.
6. If your school licenses content management, you may choose to Save to Content Collection. Otherwise, click Download Report to view the report or Run a new Report to change format or date criteria. Click OK to return to the main Rubrics page.

Rubric Reports

• Rubric Evaluation Report delivers three statistics about the rubric’s use in grading an item.
• Rubric Overall Performance shows the average total score of all attempts scored using the rubric.
• Rubric Analysis shows average scores, compared against the possible points, for each criterion.
• Frequency Distribution shows the distribution of scores across each level of achievement.

Example Report:

 

Zoom Cloud Meeting – “Free” Web Conferencing Tool

Do you need a way to collaborate with students in a synchronous online atmosphere? Do you ask your online student to present via screen share or webcam for public speaking? Do your students contact you for help with questions that would be easier to “show” them the answer? If you answered yes to any of these questions Zoom Cloud Meeting could be the answer to your needs. View More…

Donna Simiele

Portland Community College is offering a free 5 week MOOC on the best practices of developing accessible course content. The MOOC is from Oct 20-Nov 22, 2014. To read more information on this wonderful opportunity or to register go to http://eepurl.com/4YWGD.

… Donna Simiele

When we were using ANGEL it was required that students submit files in a RTF format in order for faculty to download and grade written assignments.   In Blackboard it is recommended that you have your students submit their work using any of the following file formats; Word (DOC, DOCX), PowerPoint (PPT, PPTX), Excel (XLS, XLSX), and PDF (PDF).  If you continue to have your students submit RTF files you are required to download each assignment manually grade their work and send the file back to your students via email or another source.

If you change your instructions and tell your students to submit their work using the above file formats no download is required.  Blackboard has inline grading using the Crocodoc features built into the system.  Faculty have the ability to grade, markup, and provide feedback to students from within Blackboard.  Here is a video on how to grade submitted assignments using the Inline grading feature.  I have also included the directions for students (below) on how to upload a file and what format they need to use.  This can be copied and pasted into your assignment. If you have any questions please let me know.
Resources:
– How to build an assignment in Bb (Drop boxes in ANGEL)
– Documentation on Inline Grading For Assignments
– How do students upload and assignment (Video)
– How to grade assignments using inline grading (Video)
– eLearning Faculty Support Center – Bb Learn Resources tab

Here are instructions that you can copy and paste into your assignments:
When submitting your files for grading please make sure it is in the following format: doc, doxc, ppt, ppts, xls, xlsx, pdf.  Note: if you are using Open Office to complete your coursework make sure you save the file in one of these file formats.
If you need help uploading your assignment please watch this video.

Donna Simiele

Here are some common problems with discussions in Blackboard and how they can be avoided. In both of the issues below I would recommend just setting availability dates in the “Discussion board” not in the content areas.

1. How to restrict access to students?

For those of you using discussions in Blackboard many of you have discovered problems limiting access to students. Even if you turn off the “Discussion” link in the course menu students have found using the “bread crumb trail” at the top of the screen will provide them access to the discussion board. If you set access dates on the discussions in the “Discussion Board” instead of through the content/folders students will not be able to access the discussion at any time other than the available dates and times. If you set availability dates in the “Discussion Board” they will display in the content area but if a student clicks on the discussion in the content area they will be notified that the discussion is not available until a specific date.

2. Why do discussions not display for students?

When working with discussions in Blackboard you need to make sure that the dates in the content area and the “discussion board” match. If they do not match the students will not be able to participate in the discussion at the appropriate time. Here is a video on how to check the dates in both the “Content Area” and the “Discussion Board” area http://screencast.com/t/QBfpERE7I5A. If you only have dates in the “Discussion board” and turn off the dates on the content links you will not have to deal with this problem in the future. Putting dates on the discussions in the “Discussion board” only will also give you just one area to change when you roll content from one semester to the next.

Blackboard has not created an attendance feature at this time.   You have the choice to use the traditional gold roster to keep attendance or you can use an Excel spreadsheet or Google spreadsheet to keep attendance. I have created a Google spreadsheet with dates for M/W/F or T/Th classes that you can copy into a spreadsheet for this fall.  Here is a link to the spreadsheet.

I would recommend creating a Google Spreadsheet that you can link to from within your Blackboard course. 

Steps to creating an attendance sheet:

1. Open the Google Spreadsheet with fall 2014 dates.
2. Downloading the roster from Bb. Video on how to download student’s names.
3. Create either a Excel spreadsheet or Google spreadsheet (videos below)
4. Copy the dates from the Google spreadsheet I provided.
   1. Video on how to create the Google sheet and copy the dates into the sheet.
   2. Video on how to create the Excel spreadsheet and copy names and dates.
5. If you are going to use an Excel Spreadsheet I would recommend that you upload the file to the content collect in Bb so you can access from any computer with Internet access. Video on how to upload a file to Content Collection.
6. OR If you created a Google Spreadsheet you can create a link to the sheet within your course. Video on creating a web link.

For more Blackboard Resources click on the “Bb Learn Resources” Link at the top of this screen.