UAM Continues Technological Advancements with Blackboard
Shane Glass
Staff Writer
The Information Technology department on campus made several significant upgrades to campus services this year, including a switch to Blackboard from WebCT.
Blackboard, a Learning Management System (LMS), allows instructors to publish online class assignments, group discussions, quizzes and other resources for students to access from any computer.
Blackboard licenses usage of their software on a yearly basis. Blackboard charges about $165,000 per year for licensing rights. The University of Arkansas-Monticello Information Technology said financial information regarding Blackboard could not be released at this time.
As of 2009, Blackboard provided licenses for their various management systems to 7,693 clients comprised of university systems, independent universities and colleges and K-12 institutions. Blackboard, Inc. saw a revenue of $377 million in 2009.
The Transition
Bryan Fendley, director of academic computing, said researching and planning the transition from WebCT to Blackboard took about a year. The actual transition took about two years to complete. UAM’s agreement with Blackboard began in the fourth quarter of 2007. UAM uses Blackboard 9.1, comprised of three core systems: the Blackboard Learning System, Community System and Content System.
Blackboard, Inc. acquired WebCT for $180 million in 2005. UAM used WebCT and the acquisition by Blackboard made the decision to switch to Blackboard easy when WebCT support ended.
The transition affected students and faculty alike at the beginning of the Fall 2010 semester. During the first few weeks of classes, faculty and instructors encouraged students to create Blackboard accounts and peruse the service to become familiar with it. Some teachers even required students to have written proof they created accounts and browsed Blackboard’s functions. At the same time, many instructors tried to learn Blackboard themselves since many had no previous experience with a LMS other than WebCT.
Brandie Collier, a student-worker in Academic Computing, said the transition can be complicated for some people. “But we offer training classes, live chat (via telephone and online chat service Microsoft Messenger available here), and tutorials if needed,” she said.
Reception
Blackboard and WeevilNet, UAM’s new management system for finance, administration and record keeping caused controversy and frustration this past semester across the campus.
Senior Travis Nicholson said, “the downtime, while infrequent, has caused a lot of problems with finishing assignments throughout the semester.”
“Usually people have confusion with the user interface,” Fendley said. Tutorials and workshops offered to faculty helped ease some problems, but Fendley said people just need to use the system to become familiar with it.
Some features hold a lot of promise for users, especially instructors. “The best reception is probably the backup and restore feature for faculty. They seem to appreciate that the most,” Fendley said. This feature allows faculty to backup vital resources like quizzes, class assignments, class rosters and grades. They can store these backups on local drives and also conveniently reuse them as course shells semester after semester.
Students also showed positive response to Blackboard. Nicholson said one of his favorite features allowed him “e-mail capabilities to contact all of my classmates at one time.” Senior Teighlor Daniels said she enjoys Blackboard’s organization because it “allows me to access everything in one spot.”
The Future
Problems affected the transition to Blackboard this semester, including downtime caused by database and server problems. With most of the hiccups out of the way, Fendley looks forward to updates and simplification.
Fendley said a significant update will allow students and faculty to sign in to both Blackboard and WeevilNet’s information system with a single account. As of right now, students must create two separate accounts between the services. This means students must remember login credentials for three services: campus e-mail, Blackboard and WeevilNet.
Fendley also said he would like to see faculty members use the early warning system built into Blackboard. This system allows faculty to set up rules regarding due dates and grades. The system will e-mail students to remind them of upcoming assignments, or if they’ve missed an assignment. Instructors can also configure the system to e-mail students if their grades fall below a certain percentage or if they have not logged in to Blackboard lately. Fendley said the system could help motivate students to get assignments in on time since people generally work harder to meet deadlines.
Mobile Education
Blackboard provides cutting edge mobile services for students and staff members. Using Blackboard Mobile, students can access their quiz grades, assignments, discussion boards and contact instructors. Students can view their class roster so they can contact other students or organize study groups. Instructors can access this information as well as update grades and assignments.
“The mobile interface is pretty slick,” Fendley said.
Blackboard offers mobile applications for Apple’ products (iPhone, iPod touch and iPad), Android and Blackberry devices. Users can download them free of charge and use them on wireless networks as well as cellular data networks.
“Now is not the time to fall behind in technology, especially in
education,” Fendley said. Assistive technology like Blackboard and
WeevilNet coupled with ultrafast networks will continue to push
students and teachers into a new world of education.
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