It was another good week of learning. More hands-on studios for Blackboard Learn and Kaltura. The studio course spaces that I created seem to work well. I can make everyone an instructor and they can create things, then, they can use the student preview to create a student user and experiment with the tools from that perspective. It’s useful to see how the tools work from both sides – that way we can remember how to create really clear instructions when things aren’t intuitive. The preview user allows them to add to each other’s discussions and submit assignments and they can see how that looks in grade center as an instructor. It’s good practice for me too because I can talk about the tools, how and why to use them but I don’t use them in a class type setting and see the functionality (or lack of) first hand.
I feel pretty comfortable with the Blackboard studios and depending on who shows up things can take different turns but we always manage to cover all the material. Friday we spent a lot of time talking about discussions and had to rush through a couple of other things but we managed to build forums, create threads, and comment on them, as well as create an assignment and upload something for grading. I wanted to have everyone do an audio/video feedback in their assignment but we ran out of time. They know how, they just didn’t get to practice. I encourage everyone to go back to the course and look through and play with grading etc. anytime.
The Kaltura sessions went well. In my head, I was expecting a repeat of last week where we did a novice and an intermediate even though, I knew they were going to be novice sessions. So, our second session was one we hadn’t done before and it felt a bit out of sequence – just because I was expecting the first time to be next week. We were ready but I didn’t have as much confidence going in because I haven’t used the quiz very much. Albert was a great help with that. We had fun and everyone was able to get a You Tube video into their folder in the course and then add some quiz questions to it. Some had been to the previous session where we created a video with Kaltura Capture so they had other video to work with. Everyone seems to enjoy it.
We did a special session with the Department of Accessible Learning (DALS) around assessments and accommodations for students in Blackboard. I’ve built a course for them where we will add some tests and other items so they can see how things look, test out some assistive technologies and just generally get a feel for the platform and what’s possible for their students.
Most of the helping this week seemed to be related to checking settings for people. They aren’t sure how tests and assignments work, or will work,if they have a release date on them. They are a little nervous but it’s not outright panic at this stage.
I had good energy this week – the studio participants helped with that. The pace is much nicer lately but by Friday, and the last one of the week, I was tired. Margaret and I figured out a calendar for August and left some room for the inevitable unforeseen things that will come up. We’re starting to get the Health and Safety information on returning to work in the fall. Turn, turn, turn…