University of Montana Online

Planning Your Blackboard Course

Before you develop your Blackboard course, you must make some design choices. You must decide how you are going to use Blackboard to supplement instruction, and then determine how to organize your content and materials within Blackboard. You should analyze the needs of your students, and inventory your existing course content.

By this time you should have an understanding of the features Blackboard can provide. This information is provided in the Features of Blackboard document in the Terminology and Features section. If you are using Blackboard for the first time, you might consider choosing just two or three of the features to supplement your course. Many of the materials you create and strategies you develop can be recycled for future classes.

The table below describes three levels of Blackboard usage:

Level

Ideas

Level 1:

Information

Management

Use Blackboard to help streamline course-related information management for your course:

Track student email addresses.

Use the discussion board for frequently asked questions.

Post announcements, syllabus, assignments and lecture notes.

Use the online gradebook.

Level 2:

Extend your course with an interactive learning environment.

Use the discussion board for research assignments, peer review, reflection, or to extend class discussions.

Facilitate student self-assessment by creating short quizzes, with plenty of feedback for correct and incorrect answers.

Find and link to interactive tools and multimedia resources on the Web (www.merlot.org is a great resource.)

Create interactive PowerPoint presentations to help students review concepts presented in class.

Level 3:

Create fully interactive learning modules.

Create learning modules which address learning outcomes and contain the following four components:

Presentation of information: content to support learning
Discussion/reflection: allows the learner to articulate and build mental models
Application: an opportunity for the learner to practice and express the learning
Feedback: results from the practice that the learner can use to improve performance

Learning outcomes and objectives should be made clear and explicit, and each module should address and support the objectives. Blackboard's Learning Units may be used to control the students’ path through materials.

Brainstorm:

What are your goals for using Blackboard in your course?

What Blackboard features will help you meet your goals?

Analyzing Your Students' Needs

Analyze the needs of your audience before spending a lot of time creating or converting content to electronic format.

Where will your students access Blackboard?

Campus computer labs
Special department-maintained computer labs
At home or at work

What is the students’ level of technical expertise?

How will the students be motivated to use Blackboard regularly?

How and where students access Blackboard will impact their experience. If students are accessing Blackboard on campus (which is likely the case if you are developing a supplement for a regular oncampus course) then you should develop your content using software that is available in those labs. It may be reasonable to post fairly large files. If your department provides a lab for students, you can use specialized software that is available there. If students access Blackboard primarily from their home computers, you must be careful about your software choices, and be sure to create files that are small enough to be downloaded on a potentially slow Internet connection.

The students' level of technical expertise will affect the amount of time you will spend teaching them to use the tools. Although technical support is available for students via the CIS Help Desk and Continuing Education, you must be able to explain how you use Blackboard for your course.

How will you motivate your students to use Blackboard? You can require them to log on periodically. You can assign Blackboard mini-exercises. You can post materials that aren’t available elsewhere. You can also set an example by logging on regularly yourself, to respond to discussions and keep course materials up to date.

Analyzing Existing Materials And Resources

Inventory your existing course materials.

Syllabus
Assignments
Library Reserve materials (ERES)
Web sites
Rubrics
Exams or quizzes
Lecture notes
PowerPoint presentations

Which materials meet your goals for using Blackboard?

Which materials are in electronic format? What format?

Which materials need to be converted to electronic format, or a different electronic format?

Remember – you don’t have to put all of your materials on Blackboard. The idea is to use Blackboard to enhance instruction, not to deliver an electronic course.