Notes from Blackboard TLC Europe Online 2021 (Online)

/ Jin

Thank Blackboard and the community. This is the second time that I attended the Blackboard TLC Europe online (26-28 May #TLCEUR2021) due to the pandemic impact. Appreciated the opportunity. The advantages of attending it include:

  • The event was organised as half-days across three days which could leave me another half days to deal with my daily work.
  • It’s free for anyone who are interested in Blackboard to attend. It helped people who didn’t have opportunities to attend this kind of conference because of funding limitations, far distance, time and so on. All session recordings are available for us to play back (until 24 June 2021).
  • Gaining ideas about some of the work I am doing. Learning from peers about how they have tackled issues and supported teaching and learning during the lockdown situation. Catching up the recent uses and topics that I don’t have many opportunities to notice. Getting inspired by their work, experience and stories. I saw self-motivation, curiosity, bravery and collaboration from Helen Sharman‘s talk. I saw zest, self-regulation, positive and flourish from Charlie Cannon‘s talk.

I wouldn’t be able to attend all sessions in the conference. Here I highlight those helped me the most.

Assessment

Requirements for supporting eAssessment and online procurement have been ramping up since last year, not only because the teaching and learning move to be online and distant, but also the possibilities of adopting new approaches. We need to redesign assessment, feedback and procuring approaches and review its policies, process and technologies. The discussions about “Assessment FOR learning or Assessment OF learning?” made me think more about why do we assess learning, the tools: Turnitin, Blackboard assessment tools, Xerte LIT/xAPI, Respondus and Möbius, how we have used them together to support different types of assessment, what are the constraints and what are changing. The resources below are added into my following-up reading list.

The MoCo user group is one of my favourite groups in the Blackboard Community. Amy Eyre and Helga Gunnarsdottir have made a lot of effort on leading the group. I have got a lot of support about Collaborate Ultra from the group. Helga’s talk about a UWE’s solution of supporting assessment using Collaborate Ultra showed an innovative example of what we could create based on users’ requirements. The UWE’s own developed Collaborate Assessment Tool bridged the gap that the current Collaborate Ultra cannot do and an inconsistent workflow due to technology limitations between online sessions, assessment and gradebook. The Live Assessment Decision Tree (made by Xerte) is also a showcase of how Xerte technology can be used to assist users to choose a suitable technology support solution.

Data and Analytics

Data is powerful when it’s used for the purpose. Students can use it to learn their own learning progress and be more aware of their learning experience. Educators can use it to identify learning issues and analyse the effectiveness of a course design. Managers can use it to investigate a tool’s adoption and monitor the use of the service. Data-driven approaches became a trend. For me, it is what we often called something “evidence-based”. The key of using data is how we can retrieve data from different relevant systems easily and securely and ethically, and flexibly customise them to be presented as different formats that fit into the users’ demanding. This is an area that I’m interested in exploring sooner.

Dr Charles Knight‘s talk (University of Salford) has shed light on the issues on understanding users’ real requirements when providing Blackboard’s Data and Analytics solutions. Very useful advice.

The following-up reading resources are:

Roadmap

The pandemic lockdown assisted the rapid changes of online learning. It required vendors to improve the products responsively and quickly. The Blackboard Roadmap session always provides us an idea of what would be delivered and considered so that we could made corresponding decisions and work out solutions according to the institution’s strategy. It’s very clear from Bill Ballhaus‘s talk that SaaS, Blackboard Data, Ultra course experience, personalised learning are their focus. I was delighted to see the improvement of these features below and expect the upcoming release.

  • System stability when supporting hugely increased uses
  • Proctoring Framework – Ultra Course View (now)
  • MS Teams Integration – Ultra Course View (Pilot, now)
  • Audio/Video Feedback – Peer and Course Announcements (1-3 months)
  • Gradebook use improvement (1-3 months)
  • Collaborate Gallery View to students and side by side with content (1-3 months)
  • Automated Captioning with Collaborate (1-3 months)
  • Maximum upload file size limit (3-6 months)
  • Pronouns, Name Pronunciation, Preferred name (3-6 months)
  • WYSIWYG Instructor Feedback (3-6 months)
  • Blackboard Learn group integration with breakout groups and Collaborate (3-6 months)

The following-up reading resources are:

Last but not least, I think people (especially those who use technologies daily) could stay clam when technology failed. Perhaps this is a notable outcome of remote online working since pandemic outbreak.

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