Blackboard Exemplary Course Program

The Blackboard Exemplary Course Program began in 2000 with the goal of identifying and disseminating best practices for designing engaging online courses. Using the Exemplary Course Rubric, instructors and course designers are able to evaluate how well their own course conforms to best practices outlined in the rubric. Courses that are submitted to the program will be evaluated using the rubric by a peer group of Blackboard clients. Then, a Reviewer Council reviews any course that received at least one exemplary rating. From there, courses that receive two or more exemplary ratings will be reviewed by the Exemplary Course Directors to determine who will receive an Exemplary Course Award.

The 2013 submission window has closed. Winners will be notified in May 2013.

Benefits of Participating

Submitting your course for review will provide you the opportunity to:

• Reflect on your own course design through a self-evaluation of your course and gain new perspective and insights on your course.
• Receive detailed feedback on your own course development including best practices and areas for improvement.
• Apply lessons learned from the Exemplary Course Rubric to your own courses or those you are helping to develop.
• Gain professional development experience and recognition for your accomplishments and participation in the program.

All courses will be reviewed and will receive detailed feedback on their design, interaction and collaboration, assessment and learner support components. Submitted courses are reviewed by a team of peer reviewers and the Exemplary Course Program Directors. The reviewers use a detailed rubric to evaluate each course. After, the results are compiled, the feedback is returned to each course submitter.

A representative from the award winning course teams will be invited to attend Blackboard World to be recognized for their accomplishment. See the OFFICIAL RULES for this program for more details.

Submission Guidelines

Members of the Blackboard user community are welcome to submit courses for the Blackboard Exemplary Course Program. Courses being submitted must be in one of the following systems:

• Blackboard Learn
• Blackboard Learn, CE or Vista
• Blackboard Learn, ANGEL Edition
• CourseSites by Blackboard
• joule®

Showing Evidence of Interaction and Collaboration

Interaction and collaboration is a fundamental aspect of an Exemplary Course. If there is no evidence of interaction, using such tools as discussion, chat, email, blogs, wikis, or podcasts, video, synchronous or asynchronous collaboration the course will not be considered for review. Please create a folder in your course titled “for course reviewers”. This folder should contain the evidence of student interaction. You are welcome to copy paste it in a word document or provide it in any form you wish.

Providing Access to your Course

The reviewers will need online access to a copy of the course so they can evaluate it. Please create a copy of your course without student data. The reviewers will need designer or course builder access to the archived course instance until at least July 31, 2013. Courses submitted for review must have ended by the submission deadline. Please do not provide us access to courses in which students are currently enrolled. If you have questions about providing online access of the course to reviewers, please contact us at community@blackboard.com.

How Can I Prepare for My Course Submission?

• Download a copy of the ECP Rubric to use as a reference. This is an extensive rubric used to measure your course against.
• Work with your System Administrator to create a copy of your course (without student data) for use by the evaluators.
• It is imperative for you to show evidence of student interaction and collaboration. Create a folder your course called “For ECP Reviewers” to house outstanding examples of your course.
  • Capture screen shots of great discussion boards, multi-media interactions, test questions, etc. – save all of these documents as a .pdf.
  • Create multi-media examples of your course or student interaction, using Flash, PowerPoint, Camtasia, Jing, or some other similar tool (not required for your submission).
• Gather facts and stats that explain how your course or achievement makes an impact.
• Consider how your course stands out as an industry ‘best practice’.