{"id":1089,"date":"2015-04-27T09:25:49","date_gmt":"2015-04-27T09:25:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/mle\/?p=1089"},"modified":"2015-05-19T08:24:29","modified_gmt":"2015-05-19T08:24:29","slug":"overview-of-a-blackboard-training-course","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/mle\/2015\/04\/27\/overview-of-a-blackboard-training-course\/","title":{"rendered":"Overview of a Blackboard training course"},"content":{"rendered":"

During the Blackboard Learning and Teaching Conference<\/a> this year I gave an impromptu demonstration of a Blackboard course we use as part of our \u201cIntroduction to Blackboard<\/a>\u201d staff training course. This resulted in many enquiries about this course so I\u2019m writing a short blog post for those who have asked for more information.
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\nWe run a monthly<\/a> Introduction to Blackboard<\/em> training course. The course is tutor-led in our IT training room. Attendees are asked to complete a short on-line Blackboard pre-course component<\/em> before attending the tutor led course. This is to give attendees a chance to use Blackboard as a student, become aware of some of its features, and to start thinking about how they may use Blackboard to support their students.<\/p>\n

I will structure this overview in terms of the menu structure of the course.<\/p>\n

Announcements<\/h1>\n

Since the default entry point of most of our courses is Announcements the same applies to this course. We have a simple announcement directing attendees to look over the different menu items, and to ensure they are aware that there is a little work for them to do.<\/p>\n

\"Announcements\"<\/a>

Announcements<\/p><\/div>\n

Guide: How to use announcements<\/a><\/p>\n

Read Me First<\/h1>\n

The \u201cRead Me First\u201d content area contains two items. One introduces the course and the purpose behind it. The other describes how attendees course win a badge, demonstrating the achievements feature in Blackboard.<\/p>\n

\"Read<\/a>

Read Me First area<\/p><\/div>\n

Guide: Customising your course menu<\/a><\/p>\n

About The Course<\/h1>\n

This section explains more about the training course. It also introduces the \u201cReview Status\u201d feature with an animated gif showing how this feature works. Animated gifs are very useful in Blackboard due to their file size and simplicity, and that they can be embedded easily. Marking materials as “reviewed” contributes to the awarding of a badge as described further below.<\/p>\n

\"Animated<\/a>

Animated Gif showing the Review Status Feature<\/p><\/div>\n

\""About<\/a>

“About the course” content<\/p><\/div>\n

Guide: Review Status<\/a>
\nGuide: Adaptive Release<\/a>
\n <\/p>\n

Who We Are<\/h1>\n

This section introduces the teaching team. That\u2019s Sam Cole and myself.<\/p>\n

\"Who<\/a>

Who We Are<\/p><\/div>\n

Guide: Adding Staff Information<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0Example Materials<\/h1>\n

This section shows some example content uploaded to Blackboard. Still in 2015 the most popular content creation tools for our academics are Word, PowerPoint, and Adobe Acrobat, so to assure that they can still produce content in those formats and use them on Blackboard we have some example files of those types.<\/p>\n

\"Example<\/a>

Example Materials<\/p><\/div>\n

Guide: Adding Content Items to Blackboard<\/a><\/p>\n

More interesting is the More Example folder which contains examples of embedded content:<\/p>\n