WebCT news at SFU

I attended the CanBug online conference on Friday and for one of the 45 minute sessions, three students were invited to share their perspective on using Blackboard/ WebCT to support their classroom learning. It was a very interesting session, with three different perspectives.

I am going to summarize my notes, and ask SFU students to comment on this posting. I’ll post some of the questions asked during the session (Please note that this blog gets lots of “comment spam” on this blog, so you have to register to comment, and then I have to “accept” your comment. This is not to stymie your comments, but to keep out the pharmaceutical offers!). Please be polite and respectful in your comments - we’re all learning how best to use these tools effectively. This isn’t a formal poll or needs analysis, just an informal discussion.

A few questions that some colleagues came up with:

• What are the most useful tools in WebCT? Outside WebCT?
• Do you read/ participate in the discussion area? Why or when?
• Do you print what is posted online?
• What are your pet peeves with the blended courses?
• What should instructors know if they are going to use WebCT to support the face to face classroom?
• Do you build connections with other students online? Do those disappear at the end of a course?

Session notes:

• The usefulness of WebCT to support face to face classroom depends on the instructor and how they use the tool
  • Things (grades, assignments, content) should be easy to find, with logical structure
  • Tools make sense with course structure
  • Needs reward system to use the tools (ie, grades for the discussion tool).

• Useful when things are posted and easy to find – students don’t have to worry about losing things.
• When it’s useful: When syllabus and course outline (students doing several courses – easy to keep things straight).
• Pet peeve: wrong due dates, mostly due to recycling of old course material.
• Sometimes there are links or documents, but just put up there with no context. Needs some context or instructions on what do with it? (read carefully, scan, use to answer specific questions or just for broader and optional context.)
• Sometimes the assignment setup is unclear: the technical communication needs to be clear (what exactly ARE the steps to submitting my assignment? do I click save, or submit?) plus a practice/ test assignment or quiz.
• Useful tools: discussion tool (only if their being graded on it). Assignment submission. Information storage.
• Students print most things that are stored online. Or all, even. More cost effective to have a course pack for students, instead of asking them to print out all their readings. If you hand out the hardcopy, and put it online, then if changes are made to the online version, make sure you tell the students!

• Lots of group work and communications happen outside of WebCT/Blackboard.
• ePortfolios – get students job, but most of the content came from a work term/ coop placement. No employers will look at my 40 page paper!
• Do you want to connect Facebook to your coursework? – a resounding NO! It’s a place for fun and friends, don’t need the education in there.

Recently, we’ve received a few questions about the grade book. Instructors were adding grades, but the students could not see them in WebCT.

There is usually a simple solution - most times, the instructor had not added the My Grades tool, or had not released the column. For information on resolving this, check our wiki for instructions.

Another incident was when an instructor uploaded an Excel file with a new column. The column was created in the Excel file, and so when it was imported, it was not recognized as a graded column. We had to go into the column settings in the grade book and update the settings so it was a graded column and numeric, not text.

The reasons behind some of these settings:

The My Grades tool is not added by default to course containers, because not all instructors choose to distribute grades in WebCT, and some non-credit course containers do not have grades associated with them. It is good practice not to add tools that are not used to a course container, and so adding My Grades remains an option, not a default.

Grades are not automatically released to students. This allows instructors or teaching assistants to upload grades over the course of a couple of days, but without some students getting access before others. If you have a large class, you will likely not enter all grades at once, so this gives you some breathing room.