[E-mail from Lynne Standley, Director, Education Technology Services, Computing & Information Technology, and Co-Director, WSU Technology Resource Center – April 20, 2006 ]
New this fall, the Blackboard Content System will expand your ability to teach, write, collaborate and share. By placing your content (audio, video, graphics, or text) in a secure, personal storage area under the Content Collection tab in Blackboard, you will be able to access it from anywhere in the world, anytime. Sharing with your students, your colleagues and/or the public at large is also possible by setting permissions at your discretion.
In practice, this means that you can place all your course materials and research papers in one place and link to them from any Blackboard course you set up (or with your permission, from another colleague's Blackboard site). You no longer need to copy materials from course to course. The material sits in your storage area and can be linked to from within your course site. When you update a file in your storage area, all places that link to the file will automatically refer to the updated file. After some initial set up, moving files around is as easy as dragging and dropping them from your computer into your personal storage area.
Research and collaborative projects are supported by the Versioning tool in the Blackboard Content System. When turned on, Versioning keeps a dated copy of each additional version of a file so changes can be tracked as different people with access to that file work together online. This also provides an automatic backup for overwritten files.
Another exciting feature in the Content System is the electronic portfolio. With e-Portfolios, you and your students can create a Website that can be used to capture and display student achievement, as a space for groups to collaborate and present a project, as a professional portfolio, or as a personal Web space. Content for the e-Portfolio is placed in the Content System and then used to build the e-Portfolio through an easy-to-use step-by-step process. Access to an e-Portfolio is made available by its owner through the same permission system mentioned above. The e-Portfolio can also be burned to a CD when the student graduates.
The College of Education piloted the Blackboard Content System and its e-Portfolio feature with seven classes during the fall 2005 and winter 2006 terms. Students prepared e-Portfolios to demonstrate achievement of learning objectives, and both faculty and students reported the Content System's e-Portfolio feature was easy to learn and easy to use.
As fall 2006 approaches, the Blackboard Support Team and the Office for Teaching and Learning will provide resources and training materials to help you and your students use the Content System and e-Portfolio. Check your WSU E-mail and log in to Blackboard regularly for announcements.
Lynne Standley
Director, Education Technology Services
Computing & Information Technology Division
and
Co-Director, WSU Technology Resource Center
E-mail: lstandley@wayne.edu
Phone: (313) 577-4203