Week 5 - BLACKBOARD

Hi! My name is Paula Manzanares and following the aim of this task I've chosen an e-learning tool that gives a broader insight in the combination of both ethics and technology in education.

As we know, ICT enhances the quality of education in several ways: by increasing learner motivation and engagement, by facilitating the acquisition of basic skills, and by enhancing teacher training. ICTs are also transformational tools which, when used appropriately, can promote the shift to a learner-centered environment. But the relationship between technology and education is not only limited to ICT’s and instructional design (planning) , it is also engaged with the code of ethics that people usually build up based on the way in which they perceive education. That's why I decided to choose Blackboard and introduce it as a flexible learning platform that allows you to expand online learning and optimize learning outcomes through its intuitive learning management system features.

According to the rubric that offers assessment for the aspects that conform an e-learning tool, I've found the following in terms of functionality, technology and pedagogy.

In respects to functionality: Blackboard permits greater flexibility in designing course curriculum and study schedules, which is particularly fitting for continuing education courses. It can be a useful tool to help students visualizing key aspects of the lesson, however, may make things hard if lecturers attempt to teach a large group. Regarding hypermediality, students can take the time to generate a more thoughtful communication whereas the teacher can inform them about how often he/she will review the communication tools, how they can organize and hear from you, and when you will be available to address questions and concerns. All this through the most accurate channel that the teacher consider and with

integrate assessment with teaching materials. Besides, it provides a technical support service to students for problems with LMS (help availability)

Accessibility: Blackboard facilitates active participation among lecturers and students of education courses, and allows more varieties in designing learning materials and resources such as the use of multimedia (user-focused participation). In addition, one of the most common successful strategy in the hardship of teaching large classes is the use of web-based course material e.g., course website, online resources, discussion boards etc and use of mixed media in lectures e.g., power point, overhead, etc. (required equipment)

Technical: The contents of course and activities can be embed into types of resources like text files, (X)HTML files, links to WebPages, images, multimedia files and links to uploaded files (integration with a LMS). Blackboard assessment tools include important technical/software considerations that have facilitated the emergence of technical standards such as the Aviation Industry Computer-Based Training Committee and the ADL Initiative (Laptop operating system)

Mobile design: It has different types of platforms depending on the use, Blackboard Mobile, Blackboard Learn, Blackboard Collaborate, Blackboard Connect and Blackboard Analytics.

Privacy, Data protection and Rights: One of the main strengths of blackboard are the security and privacy techniques that have been implemented in the LMS to accomplish tasks and objectives regarding two criteria: (1)Data privacy and Ownership and (2) Sign Up / Sign In

1:

• Student access controlled to activities and tasks

• Guest access controlled to activities and tasks

• Lecturer’s Intellectual Property (IP) protected

• Copyrighted materials secured from hackers and crackers

• Student privacy protected from criminals

2:

• The use of the tool does not require the creation of an external account or additional login due to tests and assignments are more secure using some levels of security and assignment submissions are logged.

Social presence: Blackboard is a web-enhanced course and therefore a hybrid (traditional and online) and it can be used in local environment. The advantages of a web course are mainly that is convenient and inclusive at anytime, is dynamic and a paperless learning, It helps to build skills and is innovative and makes the teaching easier. It does also promotes interaction thanks to the accessibility of course resources given to students and the timely communication between lecturers (collaboration). Learners and developers can be in charge of maximizing the level of security and enhance the protection method in Blackboard and

Several learning materials are available to lecturers including Overhead projectors, Video and data projectors, Internet and Course management programs (User accountability). Finally, as a consequence to Blackboard’s widespread use, pre-packaged course materials are provided by all major education publishers and delivers a more powerful teaching that goes beyond the traditional LMS. Blackboard has many clients in the US public service and the aim is to harness the power of information technology to modernize structured learning. It's also the world's most widely used commercial LMS in academia (diffusion)

teaching presence: Blackboard is a course management system (CMS) and that's why instructors are free to create or upload teaching and assessing material (e.g. lessons, discussions and assignments) and determines when students can access it. Students' progress monitoring for teachers enables instructors to be constantly involved with both the classroom and each student (facilitation):

• Tracking the frequency and duration of student access to individual course components

• Getting reports showing the number of times, time, date, frequency and IP address of each student who accessed course content, discussion forums, course assessments, and assignments

• Reviewing the navigation record of each student.

Instructors build courses and incorporate the right tools in a way that best engages students and optimizes the user experience (facilitation).

The Feedback module allows you to create and conduct surveys to collect feedback from Students. Blackboard offers useful feedback for instructors (facilitation).

Instructors can organize learning objects, course tools, and content into learning sequences that are reusable. They can create linear learning sequences organized hierarchically by course, lesson, and topic. They can reuse courses as templates for future lessons and, above all, they can access on creating a collaborative and adaptive learning environment (customization)

They can change the order and name of menu items for a course and can create their own look and feel templates across the entire system (customization)

Instructors can create self-assessments for their students enrolled in the courses. They can provide personalized comments for essay/short answer questions, and can add comments to assessment results (Learning Analytics)

Cognitive presence: Concerning the instructor tools and course development, the system provides understandable activities that were previously incomprehensible through increased student's attachment to their work. For example, thanks to analysis data for surveys and test item ,results can be exported for analysis. A Survey in blackboard is targeted to gather learner feedback. This means the results not associated with respondent. A survey also is managed via Survey Manager, with similar interface to Test Manager and it needs to be deployed in same way as a Test. Another example could be the quiz editors,Teachers can define a database of questions for re-use in different quizzes. Quiz questions and quiz answers can be randomized to reduce cheating (Enhancement of Cognitive Task(s))

Here it is the rubric used for evaluating Blackboard as a well-equipped e-learning tool.

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