Educational Technology Blog » Blackboard

Enhance and save time on your grading with Turnitin features

Amod Lele — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 20:13:13 +0000

At his Teaching Tech Talk today, Turnitin representative Shawn Lowney demonstrated some features of the Turnitin software that many users may be unaware of. Most faculty know Turnitin for its OriginalityCheck plagiarism detection function, and Lowney briefly addressed how it can perform this function well. But he also addressed other sides of Turnitin that may be less familiar.

Turnitin’s GradeMark portion contains many functions to make grading easier. Its QuickMark system allows you to save time on grading papers by dragging and dropping your most frequently used comments directly onto the paper. You can also add audio comments to convey the tone of your comments. Turnitin is integrated with Blackboard, so grades can be passed easily between the two systems.

Turnitin also includes PeerMark software to make student peer commenting easier by anonymizing their reviews. PeerMark is linked closely with OriginalityCheck and GradeMark so that you can move between the three kinds of reports easily and get a comprehensive view of a student’s work.

BU offers Turnitin via the Center for Excellence and Innovation in Teaching; these features are available to all BU faculty now. We do not yet have a structure in place for offering technical support to faculty, but hope to have one established soon.

Teaching Talks and Teaching Tech Talks scheduled for Spring 2013

Amod Lele — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 21:51:47 +0000

CEIT has now posted its list of Teaching Talks and Teaching Tech Talks scheduled throughout the Spring 2013 semester. The talks are scheduled on various dates and times to make it possible for faculty to explore some talks whatever their schedule. Some scheduled talks with an emphasis on new technologies include:

Databases for non-majors (Jan. 10)
The top 5 things faculty need to know about Blackboard Learn (Jan. 10)
Read & Write Gold (Feb. 6)
Flipped classroom and Echo360 (Feb. 13)
Collaboration tools in Blackboard Learn (Feb. 20)
iPad applications in the classroom (Feb. 25)
Google Apps in your classroom (Feb. 25)
Increasing instructional interactivity with clickers (Mar. 19)
Virtual student exchanges (Apr. 3)
High-tech cheating (Apr. 3)
How to use ePortfolios (Apr. 5)
Making grading easier and more transparent with rubrics in Blackboard Learn (Apr. 11)
Dimensions of online courses and student perceptions (Apr. 17)

The CEIT site has a complete list of talks. If you’re interested, please sign up and reserve a space!

Blackboard Learn: What can it do for you?

Kacie Cleary — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 22:16:23 +0000

In continuation of CEIT’s and IS&T’s efforts to engage faculty in the LMS migration, CEIT hosted a presentation on Blackboard Learn that focused on how faculty can use it for their course. Participants from the Blackboard Learn pilot were present to share their ideas and experience with the new environment. Some topics included:

- Collaboration tools in Blackboard: With this new system comes new tools and features. In terms of student collaboration, the three that are most significant are blogs, journals and wikis. Blogs allow students to share their personal thoughts with their classmates and gives them their own voice in the class. Journals, on the other hand, are designed to be a private communication between an instructor and a student. Finally, wikis are collaborative documents that allow students to edit each other’s work.

- Assignments and Rubrics: Faculty now have the ability to attached rubrics to their assignments, making grading more transparent to the students and much simpler for the instructor. Additionally, assignments are the new and improved way of accepting documents from students.

For more information on the presentation, please feel free to reach out to CEIT (cent@bu.edu) or the presenter, Kacie Cleary (kmcleary@bu.edu).

Student-created blogs

Amod Lele — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 20:29:05 +0000

In his course on investments, management professor Zvi Bodie uses student-created blogs. Students are grouped into teams, with each team creating a blog of its own. The blogs allow students to report quickly on current events in the world of finance, which the course teaches them to analyze. Student teams have made their blogs publicly available and some of them can be viewed here and here.

Prof. Bodie’s students use Google’s free blogging software, Blogger (which provides URLs in the blogspot.com domain). Similar (BU-supported) student blog functions will be available in the new Blackboard Learn system (aka Blackboard 9.1), available now to faculty wishing to use it in Spring 2012 courses.

Blackboard Learn Pilot is Underway

Kacie Cleary — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 11:23:44 +0000

In collaboration with the Center for Excellence and Innovation in Teaching, IS&T is happy to announce the faculty have been selected for the Blackboard Learn pilot. There are 21 faculty across the schools and colleges and about 35 courses. These courses all include undergraduate and graduate courses and large (largest at 900) and small class sizes (smallest at 10). There is a great collection of teaching styles that the steering committee feels will be representative of BU as a whole.

There is still a lot to do but we know this pilot will help shape our new learning management system. We will gradually phase out Blackboard 8 to make way for the new and improved Blackboard Learn.

You can expect to see updates and workshops on the project coming from CEIT over the next few months.