And The Winner Is …  
Terry Morris at William Rainey Harper College

For students, a solid education is built one course at a time. A truly effective experience combines the right teacher, the right course, and the right technology. At Blackboard, we are in a unique position to see how those three elements can come together in groundbreaking ways. Each year, we recognize pioneers in the use of Internet technology in the academic environment with our Greenhouse Community of Practice Award. Eight winners are selected with each winner receiving a portion of $50,000 in funding, aimed at developing and sharing best practices related to the use of Blackboard solutions for enhancing education.

As an ongoing feature of the Blackboard Academic Bulletin, we are spotlighting the 2006 award recipients. In this issue, the focus is on William Rainey Harper College, winner of the Exemplary Online Course Award. The award program recognizes and rewards faculty and instructional designers who create technologically rich and pedagogically sound online courses.

The Right Teacher

William Rainey Harper College, or Harper College, was Illinois' first community college. Located in Palatine, IL, Harper College offers a wide range of associate degree programs, certificate programs, and continuing education courses. The college is fortunate to have Terry Morris as an Associate Professor, teaching courses in Web development and computer information systems. She has been instrumental in building the college into a state-of-the-art provider of online learning.

Professor Morris was previously honored with Harper College’s Glenn A. Reich Memorial Award for Instructional Technology; in recognition of her work in designing the college’s CIS Web development program and courses. The award also lauded her work in designing resource Web sites that standardized courses for adjunct professors and provided students with a central source for course information. Professor Morris continues to work with her fellow faculty members, developing workshops to help them integrate Web design into their instruction strategies. Morris is also the author of the textbook Web Development & Design Foundations with XHTML, now in its third edition.

The Right Course

Today, Professor Morris has added the Greenhouse Exemplary Online Course Award to her list of accomplishments. Specifically, the award recognizes Morris’ online course “E-Commerce Development.”
The course introduces foundation concepts in e-Commerce and provides students with practice as they create their own e-Commerce stores. Her syllabus describes the course this way:  “Provides the student with a foundation in the fundamentals of Electronic Commerce development. Among the topics covered are software, hardware, security, payment systems, promotion and support strategies, Electronic Data Interchange, Web auctions, international issues, legal implications, ethical issues and taxation.”

The course was designed by Morris with cross-program utilization in mind. It contains topics useful for majors in business, information systems, and Web development. Since the course was launched in 2000, it has been revamped and redesigned to provide options for individualized projects and collaborative group activities. As she puts it, “I have been revising, improving, and modifying it every year based on student survey responses and my increased knowledge of online pedagogy. I also continuously revise this course to keep up-to-date with new developments and changing industry trends.”

The Right Technology

The integrated approach pioneered by Blackboard allows for a comprehensive range of pedagogic activities, ensuring that online courses are as rich and vibrant as their offline counterparts. In Professor Morris’ course, those activities include semester-long projects with built-in coaching/mentoring milestones, opportunities for students to create e-Commerce stores, Web research discussion questions, multimedia e-Commerce business ethics case studies, and review activities using multimedia puzzles and games.

Blackboard’s intuitive Web interface provides a one-stop-shop for course material and communication. Morris and her students fully utilize the forums on the Discussion Board, including one for the current module’s discussion question, and a “Virtual Cafe” for questions and general discussion. The students collaborate on case studies in small, online groups. Each group has its own, instructor-supervised area for chats, discussion, and file sharing. This approach has proved so successful that, as Morris puts it, “Students comment that the discussion questions and forums help them to get to know one another – sometimes better than in a face-to-face class.”
In addition, the students have the option to participate in virtual classroom sessions. The chat provides a synchronous means to pose questions, expand on topics, and conduct real-time Web site evaluations. For those who can’t attend the chat in real time, chat session archives are available. Linked assignments have replaced e-mail, providing a more reliable manner for students to submit work and receive feedback.

Professor Morris has exploited the vast potential of Blackboard’s technology to make this course an outstanding learning experience for her students. In her words, “Blackboard’s communication and linked assignment features are an integral part of this course.”

Motivation for the Future

This is how Terry Morris reacted to her selection for a Greenhouse Award:  “It is very rewarding to know that my work was reviewed by a panel and judged favorably against the Greenhouse rubric. This motivates me as I look forward to the future – discovering new technology tools to use, updating existing courses, identifying new courses to develop, and, of course, coaching and mentoring students.”  These students, under the expert guidance of Professor Morris and her fellow instructors at William Rainey Harper College, are ultimately the biggest winners.

The Greenhouse Community of Practice Award is open to faculty, staff and administrators of current Blackboard institutions. Stay tuned for details on other winning submissions and entry information for the 2007 awards.