Ray and Jan have been working on developing student activities in the Blackboard site – a student journal, assessments and assignments, as well as the development of content (working with Vicki on the development of lectures).
Our first group (our trial group) of students are enrolled in this unit and started their online study — actively posting to their journal and working on the first activity (one of the assignments).
So the teaching staff involved have had to move from getting a handle on how to set up site components (like assignments, quizzes, journals). Now the focus is on how to ‘teach’ in this new environment – what does the teacher have to do to keep students motivated and involved?
Instructor Tools is the tab of choice in Blackboard! How do I respond to the students who’ve posted to their journal —the mechanics as well as what I want to say to them. What do I do with submissions in the Assignment Drop Box? How does the student see my comments & the grade? How does the Grade Book work?
These online teaching tools are quite new to the teachers involved in this project so support while everyone gets comfortable with the new environment is vital in this early stage. This support will be ongoing but the need for it will decrease rapidly as they become confident. It’s always important to reassure teachers that the teaching skills they already have (that is the skills of motivating, encouraging, expanding understanding, supporting) are vital — you don’t have to learn how to teach —you’re already a teacher. What you have to learn is how to use this new set of tools (those available in the online environment of Blackboard).
How are we doing this? Because of the small number of teachers involved, this has been done by giving the teachers an overview, related specifically to the course components in the online unit. They have access to a bank of ‘How To…’ resources on our Staff Portal as well. And they have email/phone access to Education Development support when they need it.
A training session in how to use Elluminate is being run for the wider team (not only those teaching in the Diploma of Sustainability). This is happening in the next week. The Diploma of Sustainability teachers plan to use Elluminate sessions as part of this online delivery – others in the team are interested in the possibilities for their teaching too.
http://www.elluminate.com/
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