Week Ending June 12, 2020

We started running the studios this week. It was a lot of fun. Even though most of the week felt like I was a few steps behind. I’ve been preparing hand outs all week and trying to get a few screen casts ready. I think the screen casts will be useful and they take a lot less time than handouts do. 

Monday was the inaugural Blackboard Learn Novice Studio on content. I really enjoyed the format and had a very friendly group of participants. I have created a Blackboard Learn course for Blackboard studios and one for Kaltura studios.  For this Blackboard studio I created folders in the Content Collection and Folders in the Content stream – one with each participant’s name on it. They went to their folders in each place and started to create some structure for content. This went really well as simply showing people how gets a lot of nods, “yes, I get it” but having them actually do it, and see why it’s a good idea, is pretty great. It was nice to have Margaret co-host and also play along as a participant. 

I feel pretty solid with Blackboard Learn but my Kaltura knowledge still felt a bit less-so going in to the sessions. Practicing with screen casts for the Blackboard sessions helped a lot with my confidence. I was able to share mistakes and successes and of course Albert was there to fill in any blanks. Most participants were able to create a short video or screen cast and upload it to their folder in the Kaltura studio course. The novice session was full apart from one person who had another commitment and it went really well. The intermediate session was a little strange with only two people and one who dropped out part way through. It worked out though. I find it disconcerting when there is dead air in a session. For Blackboard they are off doing but we can still have conversations and are able to help out.  When they are recording something it’s different. Talking in Bluejeans is distracting rather than helpful. I think I will send people away next time and have them come back when they are done or if they need help. 

I attended the WordPress studios that Margaret and Mike did. I got a few tips that will help me clean up this site. I like seeing and hearing what others are doing, and planning to do, with WordPress. 

We facilitated two more Blackboard sessions that were well attended and covered tests, assignments, and communication tools. I used the same folder set up and participants created tests, discussions, and assignments and then they posted to each other’s forums, took each other’s tests and submitted assignments. They got to experience the student and instructor perspective.  I first tried changing everyone’s role from instructor to student and then back again. What we found was that when everyone was an instructor, the student list disappeared from the grade center. I worked around it by changing a couple back to student and it was fine. For the second round, I got everyone to save the student preview user account and that worked to keep student data in the grade center. 

There were some good conversations around using the tools and the discussion forum in particular. Margaret’s perspective with her Global Learning  hat on was very helpful.  I really enjoyed the studio format.  The numbers we had were manageable and participants seemed to enjoy being able to make things. 

I still have a lot to prepare for next week but having gone through one set of studios the next ones shouldn’t take as much ‘pre-work’ time.  I hope to focus on screen casting next week. It will be great when we have a repository of them to point people to. 

There was so much great work and creativity from our colleagues this week. I am impressed by their dedication to making great learning experiences for their students and the way they are diving in and playing with the tools. By Thursday the frantic pace of preparation was over and there was time to reflect on all the wisdom, hence the little owl for this post’s picture.  

Happy Friday.