Some suggestions for faculty new to Bb and course web sites

Manfred Kuechler
Hunter College
Spring 2001

Last update: April 8, 2001

Some Suggestions for Faculty New to Bb (and Course Web Sites)

This document was written in response to a joint meeting of an "old" and a "new" cohort of faculty in the CUNY Online project on March 9 with another such meeting scheduled for March 16. Colleagues from the old cohort were asked to present their current Spring 2001 Bb course sites ("show and tell") and -- I trust -- colleagues from the new cohort are expected to get ideas and stimulation from these presentations. I am supposed to present my course sites in the second session on March 16. But I think that in addition to looking at a seventh course site it may useful for faculty new to this to have a set of concrete suggestions condensed from past experience. I also hope that my colleagues from the old cohort will offer additions and possibly modifications if their experience has been different from mine and thus broaden my own view on teaching online.

Beyond the CUNY Online project, many CUNY faculty are moving to include online component into their courses. However, judging from the situation at Hunter, all too often the first step (requesting the creation of a Bb course) is not followed by the next one, actually using their Bb course site. Roughly half of the Spring 2001 Bb courses on the Hunter Bb server are not in active use. So, these suggestions may be of help to faculty at Hunter and all around CUNY -- beyond the official CUNY Online project.

And, obviously, I wish I had seen all this so clearly last November or December when I set out to prepare for the courses this spring and/or that I had been able to act accordingly. But there is no point in belaboring the past as long as there is reasonable assurance that some structural problems will be dealt with. And at least some people in position of power seem to have recognized the problems and are willing to make necessary changes.

Don't worry -- it will work out

In contrast to what some people may tell you: There are no big secrets about online courses, no set of difficult skills that you have to acquire before you can teach successfully online. If you are an organized and diligent teacher in the traditional classroom, you will do just fine with online courses. But, if you are sloppy and disorganized, solely relying on your "charisma" in the traditional classroom, these deficiencies will be magnified in an online course.
Still, it is probably a good idea to add online components gradually. If you have never even had a course web page (just to supplement a traditional course), you probably don't want to start with a full fledged distance learning course with no physical contact to students at all as your first attempt -- unless you have a small group of very mature and computer savvy students.
Obviously, the more comfortable you are with computers, the quicker you will learn the Bb system, and the more efficiently you will be able to use it. However, it does not take major computer skills: basically, you need to be comfortable with using the Windows environment, using a web browser (Netscape or MS Internet Explorer), and a word processing program (like MS Word). Also, with lower levels of computer experience, you want to make extra sure that the students enrolled in your course bring basic computer skills to your class and are not looking to you for help with their technical computer problems.
Finally, Bb has many features. But just because they are there, does not mean you have to use them. A feature which is a great asset in one course, may be largely useless or not more than a toy in another. Let the substance matter and the type of students you have, let the pedagogy determine what to use and what to set aside. Bb and course web sites in general are means to achieve a pedagogical objective, they are not an end in itself.

Set realistic student expectations

Make sure that nature and extent of online components in your course are apparent to students when they register; at Hunter, the registrar is willing to put a note (a "comment" in the technical terms of SIMS) right below the title, day, and time of the course into the "Schedule of Classes" (both the printed and the online version) for the fall 2001 semester
Exaggerate rather than downplay the online components
Even with a mostly classroom based hybrid course, you want student to visit the course site at least every other day; make this clear
Say something like "Frequent work on the Interweb/Web is required" and "Home access to the Internet recommended (or: a plus)"

Know about hardware/software requirements for your students and yourself

As an instructor you don't really need more "computer power" than your students. But, as you will probably spend many hours on the computer searching for useful material on the web, modifying them for course use, frequently uploading and downloading files, it is nice to have a computer which is fully up to the task. Unfortunately, I don't know much about Macs, so all my advice is in terms of Windows, but some of this advice may be useful for Mac people as well. So, here is a short list of what you should have; if you have newer and/or more powerful equipment all the better.
Hardware:

any processor above 486 (Celeron, Pentium II, etc.); a clock speed of 200 or more will do (forget about high "speed" like 1000MHz)
64 MB memory (you can never have too much)
Win 98
a 56K modem
any laser or ink-jet printer (nothing fancy)
sound card/speakers
a cheap scanner (about $100) -- comes in handy, but is not a necessity

Software (must have -- instructor and students):

Dialup connection to the Internet; try to avoid AOL or be prepared for the need to work around some problems; Earthlink has received high marks in comparative reviews lately.
Recent version of a standard browser (MS Internet Explorer or Netscape); however stay away from Netscape 6 for now, currently 5.5 for MS IE and 4.76 for Netscape. As an instructor, you should have both browsers installed and develop at least some working knowledge of the "other" browser.
MS Word 2000 and -- depending on preference -- MS Powerpoint. MS Word 2000 is only about $40 at the "educational discount", the whole "MS Office Professional Suite" is over $150 even at the education discount (see note 1 for more detail on cost). In my view, PP is overrated; there is good teaching without it.

note 2

Acrobat reader (free) to be able to view "pdf" files -- a second standard for web documents, but browsers need this "plugin".
Anti-virus software -- properly installed and set to automatic weekly update. Don't take this lightly.
RealPlayer (or comparable software like Windows Media Player, Quicktime) if you plan to use audio or video components -- and you should consider, especially for genuine distance learning courses with no physical contact at all
Course or discipline specific software; e.g., Mathematica reader for "notebook" files in mathematics and sciences.

Software (should have -- instructor only -- for those who may be new to course web sites and Bb, but who are quite computer-savvy):

Acrobat Adobe (the full product) is great if you plan to do a lot of scanning, want to manipulate documents you find in (government) archives via the web, and -- in general -- if you want to produce web suitable documents where you can control the page layout. Strongly recommended; version 5 was released in early April 2001.
"Zip" utility -- necessary to put more complex web pages on your Bb course site. There are excellent shareware products for $10-15 and your college may have a site license. WinZip is a particular good one.
Some screen shot utility. A picture says more than a thousand words. Great for producing all sorts of course documents. See appendix for more details.

Make sure that your station is set up and ready to go when you start working on your course, but surely before your course starts. Share hardware/software requirements and recommendations with your students and impress upon them to get their computers in top shape as well. A frequent source of problems are obsolete browser versions, lack of memory (can often be fixed with relatively little money like $50), and -- of course -- AOL. There is plenty of advice on how to use Bb even over an AOL connection, so share such advice with your students.

Bb features to use and how to weight online components

Obviously, there are no general rules here and in a genuine distance learning courses everything is online. Weighting of online components is an issue for hybrid courses only. But the cardinal rule is to specify the grading policy upfront. Keep in mind that it is often necessary to give graded assignments or quite a few students will not use specific online components. The "carrot" alone often does not work for all students. (Unfortunately, too many of the CUNY undergraduate students do not or can not afford to devote sufficient time to their school work anyway -- online or traditional.)
The Discussion Board is probably the most mentioned and most discussed feature of Bb. However, there is much more to online teaching than the DB. I am sure you had excellent students in the past who did not say much in the classroom, but who did great work. While some students may find it easier to "speak" on a DB, do not overrate the DB and do not give too much weight to participation in DB discussions. Of course, the nature of the course is very important here and "discussions" more important to some courses than to others. But even writing ("verbal articulation") can be demonstrated in other ways, e.g., by short papers, than via posts on the DB. If you determine 20% of your grade on classroom participation in a traditional course, then you may want to give 20% to DB participation. But, otherwise, do not let the technical means determine the learning objectives.
When using the e-mail feature, respect students' right to privacy. Do not force students to reveal their e-mail address, but try to convince them of the advantages if they provide an e-mail address. (Version 5 of Bb has an option for students to make their e-mail address available to the instructor only but not to other students.)
The drop box is a great alternative to having homework, papers, etc. sent as e-mail attachments. But be sure that you are up to handling a diversity of formats -- or issue very strict guidelines as to what document/file formats you will accept via the drop box.
The Virtual Classroom is a genuine disaster if you want to use it with more than 6 or 8 students in attendance and trying to do anything remotely similar to a physical classroom session. The software ("Tutornet", an add-on rather than an integral part of Bb) is clumsy and inadequate. Only useful as a chat room for small groups.
Group tools are a very good way of helping small groups of students work together. If the concept of your course calls for collaboration in groups then consider using these tools (group DB, group VC).
Quizzes and surveys. Nice, but cumbersome to set up and likely to produce some handling problems on part of the students. Also, no easy way to retrieve the complete data set -- very bad program design.
Personal pages may be a good motivational tool in some situations, but -- personally -- I consider this more as a toy of little real value. However, as the instructor, you should give your students a chance to find out a little bit about yourself. In genuine distance learning courses, a picture and maybe even an audio greeting are important ways to establish rapport.

What problems to expect

Quite a few things in Bb don't work the way you would expect them to work and a few things don't even work the way the Bb manual describes them to work. This is particularly true with Bb version 4. However, you are not likely to hit upon these until you move beyond the very basic uses of Bb (or you are already spoiled by having used a better system). This is the good news. And there is plenty of advice to work around the known issues (see below).
You can work as hard as you want, but going online makes you vulnerable and dependent on other people -- most notably the Bb system administrators. If a server goes down, or if files cannot be retrieved due to configuration problems, all your well thought plans about deadlines, review sessions, or exams go down the drain. For the second weekend in a row, I am experiencing server problems at Hunter (I will spare you the details) and my thoughts are not happy.

Use your colleagues' knowledge and experience

Obviously, the "trainers" in your group will be your first source of advice. But beyond what can be expected of trainers, Karen Greenberg has been extraordinary generous in making her work available, allowing it to be reused in other courses. Her "Advice for AOL Users" (needed for each and every Bb course) is just one example.
The CUNY WebBoard now has a special conference for "Blackboard Users" and much good advice can be found on this discussion board. There are currently 66 postings and you can easily search for a particular question or topic you are interested in. Many postings contain links to more comprehensive resource sites. You can become a registered user (which enables you to post so that you can ask a specific question or share your experience) or you can just visit as a guest and search and read the existing posts. Very easy to use and -- in contrast to e-mail lists ("listservs") -- nothing will clutter your inbox.
Check out other Bb course sites especially ones close to your own course in substance/topic and target group. Faculty differ sharply in their "guest" policies. Some keep their course sites wide open and only secure areas to protect either student privacy or sensitive copyrighted material, others take the opposite approach. So, may or may not be able to find comparable courses -- at CUNY or around the country. And, at some point, you will have to decide on your own policy, and Bb gives you a wide range of choices. Personally, I am a firm believer in openness and I have profited greatly from the generosity of other colleagues sharing this ideal; but, I don't have to worry about tenure or promotion any more.

Appendix: Some documents to share

Feel free to use any of the documents linked to below. Download, modify, reuse -- if you so desire. There is no need to ask for permission first. If you reuse a document largely unaltered, I would certainly appreciate some acknowledgment, but as a matter of collegial courtesy rather than as a legal prerequisite.
As most of these documents contain images (screen shots), the easiest way to download a complete document is to use MS Internet Explorer (version 5.5) and "save (them) as web archive, as a single file with the .mht extension". Unfortunately, Netscape cannot handle such files, and even earlier releases of MS IE 5.5 may not work properly, make sure that you have SP1 (service pack 1) of MS IE 5.5 installed.
Most of these files reside on the "maxweber" server in the Hunter domain. This server has been under hacker attacks lately; so down periods are possible. If unavailable, check back later. The student guides reside on Bb servers at Hunter and at CUNY.

For instructors

Using audio for online (enhanced) courses

Using video for online (enhanced) courses

Serving complex MS Office documents (Word, PowerPoint) from Blackboard and ERes

How to make journal articles available via course web pages

How to include screen shots on tutorials and web documents

Serving PowerPoint presentations from the Web

Delivering Multimedia Contents via the Web

Limitations in Blackboard/CourseInfo and how to work around them

For students (illustrated step-by-step guides)

How to use the Drop Box in Bb version 4

How to use the Drop Box in Bb version 5

How to use the Discussion Board in Bb 4 (can be used for version 5 too)

Notes:

1. Microsoft offers both "academic pricing" and "volume purchase discounts" for a number of its products. Academic pricing is available to both faculty and students on an individual basis for home use and it is available from AERs (Authorized Education Reseller) upon proof of eligibility (like a CUNY ID card). AERs are free to set their prices, but you can find available products and estimated prices as well as an AER locator on the Microsoft web site. The academic retail price for MS Word 2000 (Win) is about $85, for the MS Office 2000 Pro suite it is $175 -- as of early Aril 2001. There are also AERs online, and I have had good experience with campustech.com.
Prices are even lower via a "volume purchase" agreement an academic institution can enter. Hunter and most likely other campuses have such agreements. You need to contact your campus software liaison for details. Under these agreements, you pay for a "license" which entitles you to use the product on campus, but you don't get a CD to keep. Details vary, but you can either borrow an installation CD for self-installation or the campus IT/IC unit will install the software for you.

2. Make sure to keep your version of MS Word 2000 current; as of April 2001, you should have "service release 1a" installed. SR1a corrects a number of glitches including some related to html. An "Auto-Update" option is available. This will analyze the exact version (2000 only) you have and then determine what you need. The process may take a while. So, pick a time with low Internet traffic. -- You should also install the free "MS Office HTML Filter 2.0" which allows you to simplify the html code Word produces when you convert a regular Word document into html. Without the filter, html pages produced with MS Word 2000 and the "web archive" feature of MS IE are not fully compatible in that any images on the web page will not be saved as part of the archive.