Author Archives: Kris McElroy

Gamifying Blackboard Training

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Technology trainings can be… well… just a bit dull. Being guided through how to click buttons in software has never really been that exciting and the steps can feel a bit disconnected from your real work. Participants are often at different skill and knowledge levels, but must move through the same content at the same pace. Plus, the information is rarely retained beyond the workshop. In most cases, attendees have difficulty remembering the steps or applying them on their own and need to reach out for help.

There must be a better way. Right? The eLIS Support team decided to find out. We threw the outline for our standard Intro to myLesley (Blackboard) workshop into the trash and started over from scratch.

The Goal(s)

Our goals were simple in scope, but not so simple to achieve. The primary goal for the new training was to increase the retention of content being delivered so faculty would be better able to use their new knowledge when they returned to their desks. Towards that end we used several techniques:

  • Storytelling would give attendees a narrative to attach the steps of the process to and aid memory creation.
  • Narrative and game-based design would create a fun experience to engage affective (emotion/feeling) learning and aid memory creation.
  • Faculty would teach themselves rather than watching a demo and then try to repeat the exact same steps. The need to figure it out and struggle a little would improve retention of the steps.
  • Faculty would be able to mostly move at their own pace allowing more tech savvy users to speed through the content and novices to take their time.

Faculty would learn to use available resources including support tutorials and working with their colleagues attending the workshop.

Blackboard Clue (Version 1.0)

Who Killed Mr. Blackboard?
We created Blackboard Clue. Faculty had to discover the identity of Mr. Blackboard’s murderer, but they would need to complete various tasks in Blackboard to do so.

First, they met the suspects in the Study. Then they reviewed the Detective’s Notebook, a blog, and made comments on the clues. Next, they interrogated the suspects on the Discussion Board, or two members of the support team in the other room. Finally, they created a Wanted Poster, content item, of the suspect who did the deed. The true murderer was revealed at the end of the game and everyone got to see if they guessed correctly.

How It Went
It was ok. Everyone seemed to have a good time, but they were a little distracted by the game itself. They were so busy trying to solve the murder that it overshadowed the learning. It was too hard to form connections around the content. The game needed more structure and probably a different narrative.

Soooo…. Back to the drawing board.

Agent L vs. GITS

Enter Agent L, a secret agent battling Gremlins in the System (GITS). GITS agents, NeoLuddite, Pandora, and Clippy are trying to disrupt Blackboard courses. Ben Friday (Miss Moneypenny) hands out the missions and Quinn (Q) provides tech support.

Mission 1: Alert Your Fellow Agents! – Use the Announcement tool.
Mission 2: Fix the Broken Content using the text editor.
First, review the intercepted GITS transmissions on the Discussion Board. Then, interview Clippy, a support team member in the back of the room, in a discussion forum to discover where the GITS server is.
Mission 3: Interrogate the Captured GITS Agents
Mission 4: Create an Assignment for Agent M to shut down the GITS server.

How It Went
The new game narrative had more structure allowing faculty to more easily move through the missions, complete the tasks, and not get lost. They used support tutorials to teach themselves all of the steps while the support team moved through the room to assist, but not answer their tech questions. Collaboration was encouraged allowing the more advanced attendees to happily aid the newbies in figuring stuff out.

The game format had two primary issues, however. One, faculty become their students and don’t read the instructions. (Shocking, I know.) The game master pointed out their error and directed them back to the mission profile. Two, some faculty just don’t want to play. They prefer the old format where they sit back and are fed the content without too much expectation. That attitude can be hard to overcome, but the other attendees simply play on without them.

Overall, there was a lot of laughter, a lot of noise and chaos, and everyone was successful. We’ve offered the game a few times now and feedback from faculty has been positive. We can’t say for certain that it’s more effective than the old traditional training, but at least we are all having fun. That must count for something. Plus, the eLIS team has been able to model a new way of teaching and give faculty a chance to see us a fellow educators, not just the “tech folks.”

Ally Update: Preview Documents in Your Browser

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Ally’s latest update will now show in-browser previews for PDF’s, Word documents, and Powerpoint presentations.

What does this mean?

Previously, when you clicked on the Ally gauge to view your document’s accessibility score and list of any accessibility issues, you only saw an icon for the document in the main window. Now, Ally will allow you to view your document right in the browser and highlight where the specific accessibility issues are. No more guessing.

Sample accessibility score with issues highlighted

Highlights are currently provided for:

  • Images without an appropriate alternative description
  • Text fragments with insufficient contrast
  • Tables without table headings

It’s now much easier to identify the issue and then fix it. View the video below to see it in action.
(Note: the video does not have any sound.)

Improving Peer Feedback with Peergrade

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Lisa Spitz is an assistant professor at Lesley’s College of Art and Design and the program director for the User Experience online BS degree program. Lisa worked with eLIS this fall to pilot a peer feedback tool, called Peergrade, in her Sketching for Interactive Design course. Below she shares her and her students’ experiences using Peergrade.

In this course, students use sketching to document research insights, tell a story, and visualize mobile interface concepts and interactions. Each individual assignment includes a period of sketching and revising, where students provide peer feedback and then revise their own sketches for overall clarity. My initial experience teaching this course in Blackboard raised a number of challenges with the peer review process: not all peer feedback was of the same caliber and not all students received the same amount of feedback. This meant I was compensating for poor and/or incomplete feedback. I was also manually tracking the quality and quantity of feedback each student provided to their peers, for grading purposes. Further, due to inconsistencies in the types of feedback received, students reported finding it difficult to revise their work. 

Over the summer, John McCormick in eLIS introduced me to an online peer review platform called Peergrade. The overall format and structure of Peergrade was a good match for my particular assignment structure and I was interested in seeing how it might better support our students in the peer review process.

The tool itself was fairly easy to learn. As an instructor, I was able to set up my “classroom” in Peergrade and create each of my assignments. For students, their experience entailed posting their sketches in Peergrade and then evaluating their peers’ sketches based on a custom rubric (which I set up in advance of the course running). The biggest challenge I faced was in tailoring the rubrics to each individual assignment. Students evaluated their peers work based on quantity and diversity of sketches as well as unique requirements for each assignment. The rubrics I created provided students with both quantitative and qualitative feedback on their sketches; and the system guaranteed that each student received feedback from three other students.

Students responded favorably to the use of Peergrade. They were fairly self-sufficient in using the Peergrade platform. It required very little technical support from my end; for instance, allowing late assignment submissions and permitting students to re-upload their work. Some adhoc quotes found in journal entries and the course evaluation include:

  • “I really like Peergrade, I only wish the rest of my courses used this site. It is so much easier to give the feedback and receive the feedback that you want without upsetting another peer about your opinion. Since it is anonymous it is easier to be truthful if you have suggestions on changes.”
  • “That program allowed me to finally get honest feedback from my peers on how they truly felt about my work.”
  • “By reviewing other students, I often could improve my own work through just that process alone.”
  • “The peer commenting system was a great way to discuss among other students each other’s work before turning in the final assignment each week. Critiquing helped me understand my own skills better.”
  • “Peergrade was life changing, love it.”

In an ideal world, I’d spend more time user-testing assignment rubrics before launching these assignments with a live class. However, design is an iterative process and course design is no different and I anticipate refining each assignment rubric with each course instantiation.

If you’re just not sure how this would work within your classroom context, I’d say start small. Choose one project in which you’d like students to give and receive quality peer feedback. Decide what a “good” assignment submission looks like and set up your rubric to probe specifically on those areas. Then, see what the experience looks like from both the Instructor and Student views. Having an initial experience with Peergrade will help you to determine just how and when it might be an asset in your courses. 

Peergrade is currently be used in a small number of online and on campus courses at Lesley. If you would like more information on using Peergrade or peer feedback in your courses, contact elis@lesley.edu.

Make Your myLesley Content More Accessible

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Faculty often ask if Blackboard is accessible. While most web-based tools can always be more accessible and easier to use, the basic answer is “Yes, Blackboard is accessible.” The real problem often comes when we upload files and documents to Blackboard that may not be as accessible as they should be. We may not even be aware that the files we uploaded aren’t accessible to students with impairments. Blackboard Ally wants to fix that.

When an instructor uploads a file to myLesley (Blackboard), using the exact same process they currently use, Ally compares the file to a Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Checklist. It then does three things.

For students, Ally automatically converts that file into alternative, accessible formats. Alternative formats include Tagged PDF, HTML, ePub, electronic braille and audio. If the instructor uploads a scanned chapter or article, Ally will convert it to an OCR PDF which can be read as text by a screen reader.
Ally alternative formats

This a proactive and automatic process that happens without the instructor or Disability Services doing anything. Students do not need to self-identify or request alternative versions. The downside is that the quality of these alternative versions can vary. The more complex the original document, the more difficult it is to create a converted document that is useful and easy to navigate by the students who need them.

Therefore Ally also provides guidance to faculty on how to improve the accessibility of the documents uploaded to Blackboard. Each uploaded document receives an accessibility score and red, orange or green icon. Clicking on the icon presents you with information on what accessibility issues are in the document, information on why it is an issue, and links to tutorials on how to make changes to the document.

Ally has let you, the instructor, know that your documents may not be accessible and how to improve their accessibility without the need to attend a training or to have Disability Services reach out to you. You can slowly educate yourself on accessibility and improve not just the documents that are currently in your course, but also all future documents you will create. Over time, you will simply create accessible documents from the beginning because now you know how and how easy it can be.

Lastly, Ally provides an Institutional Report telling the university which courses have inaccessible content and what kinds of content are problematic. This means that the university can target its outreach and training based on our specific issues. One program may have a lot of courses with images and no alternative descriptions. Another’s biggest issue may be that Word documents require headings and subheadings. Instead of offering generic training and support for everyone, we can now reach out to each program and offer training and assistance for the issues they actually are having. The report also allows us to demonstrate our improvement over time.
Ally institutional report main issues

Ally will be available to all myLesley courses beginning this Fall. Keep an eye out for those accessibility scores on your documents. Ally is also making continuous improvements so don’t be surprised when new features and guidance become available.

If you have questions about Ally or need assistance, email elis@lesley.edu.

Take Attendance in myLesley

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Blackboard has rolled out a new Attendance tool, allowing instructors to easily and quickly track attendance. Using the Attendance tool will create an Attendance column in the Grade Center, which will provide an overall attendance score.

Instructors can now find the new Attendance tool by going to the Control Panel > Course Tools > Attendance.

access the attendance tool

 

For more information see Attendance or view the tutorial video below: