The Daily Bulletin

The following Blackboard training sessions and workshops will be held in February. All workshops are suitable for instructors teaching face-to-face, hybrid, or online courses. Presentations will be one hour and are limited to 10 participants. The instructor will be available for an additional 30 minutes after the workshops for questions and discussion.

Please register online. All sessions will be held in Bulger Communication Center 104 or as a virtual webinar. 

Blackboard Learn 9.1: Utilizing Rubrics in a Blackboard Course
A rubric is an assessment tool listing evaluation criteria for an assignment. A rubric divides the assigned work into parts and provides clear descriptions of the characteristics of the work associated with each part, at varying levels of skill. Rubrics can be used to communicate the assignment requirements and acceptable performance standards. Rubrics can also help ensure consistent and impartial grading.

By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to create and edit a rubric in Blackboard and use the rubric to simplify the grading of assignments. Rubrics can be attached to assignments submitted in Blackboard, to essay questions, to discussion forums, or to any campus-based activities or requirements that will be graded, such as papers, special projects, presentations, practicums, labs, or performances. Rubrics can be individualized to fit instructors' needs and make grading more efficient.

Blackboard Learn 9.1: Collaboration Tools
To build a successful community, students need the tools to interact and have conversations. Blackboard Learn offers five communication tools for self-reflection, collaboration, and communication. By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to use the discussion board, blogs, journals, wikis, and groups to provide rich assignments and evaluate students in authentic ways, where students can share and create knowledge.

Each of the five interactive tools can serve distinct purposes. Any or all of them can be used in a course, and they work well in combination. Select the tools that meet the course goals and allow students to interact in the most efficient ways.

Blackboard Learn 9.1: Student Performance and Retention Center
Knowing how students are performing helps instructors understand what they are ready for and capable of. Faculty members can ensure that all students have an opportunity for success while they monitor their performance in the course.

By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to use the following Blackboard tools to effectively measure student performance to see exactly what they are doing and how they are participating:

Retention Center: An early alert and monitoring system that provides an easy way for instructors to quickly identify which students in the course are at risk. Instructors can communicate with struggling students and help them take immediate action for improvement, and also keep track of patterns over time.

Performance Dashboard: Instructors can view all types of user activity in their courses.

Course Reports: Course reports provide a detailed picture of student activity in each course, including details about which students are accessing the course and when.

Tasks: Faculty members can track student progress for tasks that they've created.

Item Analysis: Instructors can view statistics on overall test performance and individual test questions. These data help instructors recognize questions that might be poor discriminators of student performance.

Blackboard Learn 9.1: Enterprise Surveys
Enterprise Surveys is a system tool that provides a way to collect feedback from specified groups of people. Surveys can be sent to any selection of courses or departments, or to the entire institution. Surveys can also be sent to e-mail addresses outside the system. This training will focus on how to create a survey in Blackboard, how to deploy it in the most efficient manner, and how to create a report to analyze the results.