First posted: Jan 10, 2001
Last updated: Feb 8, 2002
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Cut the politics (preface) and skip to the "how to"
stuff
| Preface
Blackboard 5 (the successor product to CourseInfo 4) was released in the summer of 2000. The initial release was rather unstable, but release 5.02 turned out to be stable and free of any significant bugs and glitches -- at least as far as basic functionality is concerned. Still, the two CUNY units which had used CourseInfo most intensively in the past (Baruch, CIS) decided to stay with CourseInfo (4.10) for the spring semester 2001 waiting for Blackboard 6 which was due to be released later in 2001. However, as of January 2002, Bb 5.6 is still mostly "vaporware", and not even Bb 5.6 has been released. Hunter, in contrast, was running Bb 5.02 in the spring semester 2001, but then -- in contrast to other CUNY colleges -- did not upgrade to Bb 5.5 for the fall semester 2001, but has upgraded to Bb 5.5.1 in early January 2002. Hunter is a "level 1" installation under Solaris using MySQL. Apart from actual bugs (where the program does not do what the manual says), there are concerns about the functionality of Bb/CI, i.e., what tasks can be done with Bb/CI and how easily they can be done. In January 1998, Marten DenBoer (Hunter/Physics) and I conducted a thorough evaluation of CourseInfo (then version 2.0), TopClass, and WebCT -- as the three leading (but still affordable) course management software (CMS) products. Our initial enthusiasm quickly waned as we became aware of severe limitations in CourseInfo's functionality. At that time, we concluded that WebCT was the much superior product. CUNY, however, came to a different conclusion and entered into a system wide site license agreement with Blackboard, Inc. in the second half of 1998 offering all CUNY campuses free access to this CMS. In the spring 2000, Hunter decided to take the free offer rather than getting its own license for WebCT, the product the Hunter CMS task force had recommended unanimously. During December 2000 and early January 2001, I have spent many hours checking out both CourseInfo 4.0 and Bb 5.02, reading manuals and other documentation provided by Bb, Inc. but -- more importantly -- running practical tests on the Hunter BB (5.02) server, the CIS/CUNY Online CI4 server, and the corporate Bb, Inc. 5.02 server (where faculty can get space free of charge as part of their promotion efforts). Despite some noteworthy improvements over version 2.0, I quickly discovered that many of the shortcomings Marten and I unveiled in 1998 have not been addressed. I have used Bb extensively for all my classes in 2001, mostly on the Hunter Bb5.02 server, but I have run additional tests of Bb 5.5 on both other CUNY Bb servers (in the summer of 2001) and on the Hunter T/D server (in December 2001). At considerable expense for Hunter, Teri Kestenbaum, Senior Director of Learning Services at Blackboard, Inc. was brought to Hunter to conduct training sessions, including an all day session supposedly for advanced user on Jan 9, 2001. Hunter's ICIT invited me to submit questions about Bb in advance, and I gladly complied. Ms. Kestenbaum, however, was not willing to address the questions that had been sent to her in advance. But she remarked summarily that -- based on a quick look at my question list -- it appeared that most things could not be done with Bb. I also received indirect confirmation on many of these limitations during her set presentation (the questions below include a few additions to the list submitted to Bb, Inc.). Some final thoughts
This document, then, is intended to help faculty decide what to do in terms of course web sites: use ERes (the limited CMS we have used at Hunter since 1996), use independent web pages, or make the best of Bb -- as I have chosen to do. |
b. How can I quickly change the particular folder
location of a course document?
You can not. Documents cannot be moved into or out of a folder
or from one folder to another, unless you delete and then upload the document
again.
c. How can I enlarge the frame used for the display
of the actual course document -- other than going to high screen resolution
and/or mini sized fonts (there are students with visual impairments and
there is the ADA)?
You can not change the size of this frame, as a "no resize"
parameter is set. Either buy a larger monitor (19" or larger) so that high
screen resolution (1024x768 or higher) produces easily legible text or
learn how to use your browser to open frames in a new window (in Netscape
4.7x select from the right-click pop-up menu after the frame is displayed;
in MS IE right click on the link before the particular page is displayed).
d. How can students quickly save a complete
course document (htm with images) to their disk?
No easy way for a less computer-savvy person, but once you are an expert
user of your browser (by the way, the AOL browser should not be used) it
does not really take that long. First, open the document in new window,
then use "edit page"/"save as" in Netscape or save "complete page" in MS
IE.
e. Are there any document formats (with defined
mime types, of course) that cannot be served from within BB -- other than
streaming media files?
There are no restrictions, as long as the user/students downloads the
complete file. Despite of what the Bb
tip sheet describes, streaming media can not be served from
within Bb -- but a file in streaming format can be downloaded from the
BB data base and then played locally after the complete file is downloaded.
f. When do I have to use a zip file to
upload a complex htm page (with associated image files), when will BB simply
prompt me for the missing files? Is there a particular cutoff point, e.g.,
if the page has up to 5 associated files BB will prompt, thereafter the
page will just not work?
One of the questions, Ms. Kestenbaum (Bb, Inc.)
declined to answer even indirectly. I have seen prompts for four different
missing image files. I assume that the number has to be fairly large before
the prompting system fails. It did not work with an html-converted PP presentation,
though.
g. The uploaded files seem to have a fixed address
(URL) though this is mostly hidden from view. These addresses, of course
change when a course is "exported". But are there conditions under which
this address changes even within a given course site (e.g., due to deletion
of other documents)?
The URLs seem to be fixed as long as the file stays attached to the
same document. But the addressing scheme is slightly different in the various
Bb versions. Opening a document in a new window (see q.1c) will usually
allow to determine the URL. Bb tries hard to hide these from view, so people
with less experience may have problems.
h. Why do these URLs not work when entered in
the location box of a VC (Virtual Classroom)?
No answer from Ms. Kestenbaum (Bb, Inc.) and I have not come up with
an answer myself.
i. Is it possible to attach more than one file
to a document? Is is possible to embed more than one image in a page created
directly in Bb?
Yes, it is if you are using Bb 5.x -- but it is not in
CI 4.
j. Can I tell whether a specific student has accessed
a specific document (e.g., a new assignment), exactly when, how often?
Not really, before version 5.5, though the manual seems to suggest
differently. First of all, with respect to a specific document (if you
have enabled the "tracking" option for this document) all that gets reported
is the number of "hits", not a specific date/time of access. By trial and
error, choosing different reporting time periods, it may be possible to
narrow down when the first hit occurred, but it would be tedious. Secondly,
hits are recorded in a pretty simplistic way. Let's assume you put a document
in the "course document" area (by just adding a document, not in a folder)
and that the course document area contains say 10 other documents. Then,
every time a students opens the course document area (i.e., all documents
in the course document are displayed), this will count as a "hit" for each
single document in this area. So, the Bb statistics may show 25 hits by
Johnny Miller on your specific document without that he opened it one single
time. Now, isn't that brilliant programming?
The work around Ms. Kestenbaum suggested (it seems to actually work
at least for Bb 5.02) is to create a folder first and then put this specific
and only this specific document into that folder. However, even if you
do this and the document has a file attached to it, a hit is recorded whenever
this folder (containing this one document) is opened -- whether or not
the attached file is opened. So, the only way to have a reliable hit count
on a specific document is to put this document in a folder of its own and
enter (type, paste) the complete contents via the Bb page editor (do not
attach a file). This is unbelievably clumsy. If you had access to the server
(a "shell account") you could get much more specific information by using
a "grep" command on the (httpd) "access_log" file.
Ms. Kestenbaum's explanation: Hits don't mean anything anyway since
you don't know whether a person really reads the contents of a page he/she
displays. Well, true. But, at least, if I know that the hit count is zero,
chances are very slim that this person has even looked at this document.
Therefore, it is important not to get the false hits Bb produces.
Note that Bb 5.5 provides much more detailed
course statistics and also allows to download usage data for import into
a spreadsheet program for further analysis. However, contingent upon browser
and browser version, there are still display problems in that charts and
graphs may be shown which do not belong to last analyis requested. When
doing more than one analysis it is often necessary to refresh/reload the
page before the results shown are correct. This is still not fixed in Bb
5.5, only the explicit warning from Bb 5.02 is gone.
b. How do I prevent students from sending e-mail
under a false name (by temporarily changing their personal information
-- which I don't want to block/disallow altogether since students need
to be able to change their e-mail addresses themselves)? Same problem for
DB postings.
You can not. Either disallow students to change their personal
information (all or none, cannot be limited to just the e-mail address
though Ms. Kestenbaum claimed otherwise during her presentation at Hunter)
or anticipate DB postings and e-mail messages under false names. Colleagues
from Baruch reported inappropriate postings under the name of the instructor(!)
in one course in fall 2000.
The potential for abuse has led Hunter to disallow changing any personal
information -- including the e-mail address. As very few students use their
Hunter e-mail address and only a limited number is able and/or willing
to set their Hunter accounts to automatic forwarding, this has led to serious
problems in maintaining e-mail communication with students. It is necessary
to collect students' preferred e-mail addresses by other means.
c. How do I get the (preferred) e-mail addresses
for students into my Bb class roster?
Ideally, the registrar files would contain the currently preferred
e-mail address of a student. When enrolling a student in the overall Bb
system, an e-mail address must be supplied. However, currently at Hunter,
bulk enrollment based on the registrar file contains the Hunter e-mail
address only, and many students do not use this address. A significant
portion is not even aware that they have such an account. Depending on
the administrative policies in effect at the Bb server, this may or may
not be possible (nothing is possible at Hunter). E.g., by
b. How do I upload an existing pool of multiple
choice questions (not from a previous BB course) without retyping
the whole stuff?
You can not. You have to type each individual question and --
in case of multiple choice questions -- each individual response option.
Of course, you can copy-and-paste, but it is one piece of information (each
single response alternative) at a time. Never mind that many textbooks
come with Instructor Manuals which include test materials on diskette (and
printed material could be easily scanned using something like Adobe Acrobat
and a scanner for a $100). However, this task can be greatly simplified
by using third party software (Respondus
Bb 1.0).
You can also buy a "course cartridge" from one of Bb, Inc.'s business
partners (including several major textbook publishers) and these may contain
question pools in the specific Bb (xml) format.
c. How do I upload a file with grades determined
outside BB (like paper grades, "bubble sheet" (OMR) test results, etc.)?
You can not. Given the trouble you have
setting up a quiz inside Bb, the likelihood of external quizzes increases.
But you have to enter each score individually. Not a big deal for a class
of 20, but a class of 200?
d. How do I compute a weighted average of different
components (tests) to determine a course grade using the gradebook?
You can not. Ms. Kestenbaum: the Bb online gradebook is not
meant to replace your real grade book. However, given the recent change
in NYS law which prohibits posting grades by partial SSN, Bb seemed to
offer a great alternative: simply put the grades in the online gradebook
and students could check their grades there. But you can't even compute
an average based on online quizzes let alone upload grades determined otherwise
(see q.3c). In addition, there have been some "authentication" problems
with Bb 5.02 (where access to personal grades was given to third users).
Hopefully, the problem is fixed in version 5.5.
Version 5.5 also introduced some limited weighting
functionality -- parts of which finally work in version 5.5.1. However,
the weighted results are not visible to the student and the numbers shown
to the instructor are different in the screen display and in the "export"
version. So, there really is not much gain.
e. How do I correct a typo in a quiz or survey
after I have made it "available"?
First of all, you need to make this quiz "unavailable" as you cannot
modify "available" quizzes or surveys. This, however, has the effect that
all responses obtained so far will be lost. So, if some of your students
have already taken the quiz, you practically can not correct some
stupid little typo. Of course, since you have to type everything by hand
and the Bb page editor does not have a spell checker chances for typos
are pretty good. But, read q.3b again.
f. How do I impose a time limit for a quiz?
This is an option during the process of making a quiz "available".
Of course, for a time limit to make sense, you should not allow
repeated attempts at the same time. When using MS IE 6 (the browser Bb,
Inc. recommends), a student can reset the clock to zero simply by pressing
the browser's "back" and "foward" buttons in succession. At least, in some
versions of Bb, this resetting the clock on the client (student) side does
not affect the total time calculated -- and both student and instructor
will see the amount of excess time used (if the resetting has indeed resulted
in using more time than allotted).
However, there are additional ways of beating such a time limit. Again,
using MSIE a student can print the whole page with all the questions (via
the right-click menu) and then simply close the browser without submitting
at this point. This will show as an incompleted attempt (possibly due to
server or Internet problems) in the online gradebook. Hence, a student
can make this claim and ask the instructor to reset the quiz for him/her
and after working out the answer on the printer version without any restrictions
then take the quiz again and complete it in time. So, be suspicious of
such reset requests; on the other hand, such technical problems do occur.
Bottom line: To be on the safe side, do not use Bb's assessments for
anything than other practice quizzes.
a. How can I preserve/set default settings in
terms of permissions (floor, none)?
b. How can I preserve a set of 'slides' from
one session to the next?
c. How can I store such slides elsewhere in my
Bb course and access them conveniently in the VC; in particular,
how can I bring up a previously stored "course documents" in the VC?
d. How can I keep both the "chat panel" (where
I type/lecture) and the "access panel" (where student requests for the
floor are indicated) open at the same time?
e. How can I save "drawings" (amended, annotated
slides) and have them available later in the "archive" of the VC session?
f. What do I have to do to make the navigation
buttons on the student screen work?
The answer to all these questions is that you
cannot do this. This makes it a rather clumsy tool. But I gave it
a try in one of my classes (a graduate class with just 14 enrolled students)
anyway. A first orientation session with just five or six students went
somewhat okay, but when bad weather forced a school closing and I tried
to conduct a real session via VC instead, the result was simply a disaster.
This tool is largely useless, at best suitable for meetings of small groups.
g. What are the limitations of the "whiteboard
browser"? Some more complex web pages do not display correctly.
I was unable to get a comprehensive answer. In general, the simpler
the page the better. Pages with frames, java applets, embedded objects,
etc. are all likely to fail. There is also no decent documentation for
this (sub-)product.
h. For group VCs, how can I assign a student group
leader so that this group leader has the same controls that I have as a
teacher?
One more time, you can not. In a group VC, everybody can do
everything which can easily result in total chaos, not so much because
students have bad intentions but because they don't fully understand how
the whole thing works.
i. How can I keep students from participating
in a VC session under a false name?
In Bb 5.02, participants are identified by their
user name (which they cannot change, even if they are allowed to change
their "personal information"). As user names are often rather artificial
and determined by administrative needs, this makes it difficult to match
participants. While this is an improvement in security, it would have been
much better to continue to use first names in the main chat window, but
display both user name and first name in the "participants panel".
In CI4, you can not -- unless you disable
changing the personal information. However, you can always evict students
from a VC session and if you know your student you will recognize a "funny"
name. But this is no defense against a student taking the name of another
student in the class.
j. How can I check out how the VC works for myself?
It probably works best over a reasonable fast connection and on a computer
with sufficient memory (64 MB and up). The processor/speed is less important;
it worked well on my over 3 year old Pentium II-233 Gateway G6. It assumes
that you have a Bb/CI course already.
If you decide to give the VC a try in your real course, consider using
this set of slides for an introductory VC session with your students.
b. I teach two sections of the same class with
identical contents, so I am using one Bb course for both sections. How
can I distinguish between the students by section, e.g., in my online gradebook?
Can I have my gradebook organized in two segments, each one in alphabetical
order?
No, you can not. There is no choice, the order of students in
the grade book is strictly alphabetical. You can, however, create two "groups",
one for each section. Group membership cannot be included with the batch
enrollment, but must be entered by hand, clicking a check box for each
student belonging to a specific section/group. Feasible for my situation
with two sections of 30 students each; very impractical for some science
courses with hundreds of students and a large number of sections.
More
information ("Bb tip sheet") about options to deal with multiple section
courses in Bb.
Bb works best with a strong central administration, with set courses which do not change much from one semester to the next, where all course material is fixed before the course starts, where everything runs on a fixed schedule, and where the role of the instructor is reduced to administering canned quizzes (taken from cartridges sold by Bb partners), to keeping some oversight over the postings on the discussion board, and to handing out grades in the end. Obviously, you don't need tenured faculty and full professors for this. Cheap adjuncts do just fine. And moving to online delivery (strict distance learning), the pool of available adjuncts will increase as very flexible work hours (from home) fit the needs of many who would find it difficult to participate in the labor force otherwise (not the least parents of small children).
While CUNY's decision for Bb may seem irrational from the point of view of an engaged traditional professor eager to explore the many potential benefits of new technologies for the teaching, learning, and discovery process, it is perfectly rational from an administrator's point of view eager to cut cost per course (by reducing the number of tenured full-time faculty and increasing the number of students enrolled). Consequently, I have no illusion that Hunter and CUNY will stay with this software, and we, the faculty, need to make the best possible use of it.
In November 2001, the Bb, Inc. business strategy became even more apparent
as an extensive rebranding of the Bb, Inc. products coupled with significant
license fee increases was announced in time for the EDUCAUSE meeting. Supposedly,
a "Bb Basic" product will continue to be available at roughly the same
cost as before, but it is not clear at this point what exactly this product
will entail and what kind of support will come with this basic product.
The push is clearly towards the higher end products providing integration
with other software as well as administrative data bases with a fee structure
based on FTE ("full time equivalent" student head count for the college
independent of actual Bb users). The license fee for a college like Hunter
can easily go from $10,000/year ($5,000 of which are paid by CUNY) to something
close to $100,000. This is not going to happen, what what we will have
available at Hunter in fall 2002 is very much up in the air. Consequently,
instructors should develop as much material as possible in Bb independent
form, e.g., created documents on their own station and uploading such files
into their Bb course site in contrast to creating complete documents in
Bb itself. Or, creating Powerpoint presentations (or other "slide shows")
and upload these (see separate advice
document) rather than jumping through the hoops of Bb's "Learning Units".