Pace University [New York, New York] -- Pace University serves thousands of students each year, many in large introductory courses with multiple sections – CIS 101 has nearly 100 sections on its own. To reduce administrative overload and more easily manage content, Pace began looking for solutions and in mid-2002 began using the Masterfile Course Asset Manager from Concord (
http://www.concord-usa.com), integrated with Blackboard Learning System™ via Blackboard Building Blocks®. Course content is stored once within the Concord Masterfile content management system and linked within a master course. The Pace team uses Masterfile to create as many sections for that course as needed, each section a duplicate of the master course, complete with links to the appropriate content that is stored in Masterfile. Storing the content once provides Pace with savings in overhead and management.
Marquette University [Marquette, Wisconsin] -- Like many institutions, Marquette was struggling to find a way to manage printers and printing costs. In August 2001 they adopted the UniPrint software Transaction Interface with their Blackboard Transaction System™. Pharos UniPrint, from Pharos (
http://www.pharos.com), allows them to set different print quotas for different users on campus, manage printer settings, and track system usage. Within one semester they realized significant savings in paper and toner, were better able to track individual printer usage, implement a printer maintenance schedule and high level of user satisfaction across campus.
Baylor University [Waco, Texas] -- Cameo Melichar, Sharon Hynan, Sandy Bennett and David Seago from Baylor University (Texas) have developed a Web-based individual tool called Online Journal. The Online Journal Building Block provides pedagogical benefits for both students and instructors, as an additional tool for assessment, evaluation and discourse between student and teacher. Online Journal allows Baylor to take the successful web-based journaling concept that they began in 1998 and integrate it seamlessly within the Blackboard learning environment.
Quinnipiac University [New Haven, Connecticut] -- Quinnipiac chose to deepen its commitment to online learning by integrating Lectora, a content development tool from Trivantis (
http://www.trivantis.com), with the Blackboard Learning System. Through Building Blocks, Lectora extends the capabilities of the Blackboard Learning System by enabling instructors to develop and publish custom multi-media content to the Blackboard Learning System. As a result of the Lectora and Blackboard integration, students in the pilot program showed measurable improvements in achieving a number of learning objectives. Quinnipiac has now expanded the use of Lectora to instructors in a broad range of disciplines with excellent results.
Griffith University [Brisbane, Australia] -- Debi Salmon, Tracy Engwirda and the team at Griffith University have been busy building tools to meet the needs of their instructors and have made two of those tools Search Content and Frequently Asked Questions Tool available to the Blackboard community. Using the Search Content tool, students and instructors can search folders and content items within a course. As the name implies, the Frequently Asked Questions tool allows instructors to easily create and organize a list of frequently asked questions. The searchable tool enables questions to be grouped into categories as well as easily collated for viewing or printing. Source for both of these tools is available at the Bb Open Source web site (
http://www.bb-opensource.org/).
Princeton University [Princeton, New Jersey] -- Dennis Hood and the team from Princeton are focused on user satisfaction - specifically the more than -500 instructors who use Blackboard each term. One tool they are preparing for release to the Blackboard community is a Facebook tool. Using the Facebook instructors can match names to faces by viewing their course roster online. Within the roster each student's name and email address are paired with a digital photo. Instructors love the Facebook, which Princeton will shortly be releasing (source and all) to the Blackboard building blocks site.
Seneca College [Toronto, Canada] -- Santo Nucifora at Seneca College has built a number of tools to make monitoring the Blackboard Learning System easier for System Administrators. The first Building Block in the Seneca toolkit series Who's Online? has been updated for Blackboard Learning System and Blackboard Community System (release 6) and is now available in the Building Blocks Catalog. Using the tool, administrators can identify which users have logged into Blackboard Learning System within the previous 3 hours. This is especially helpful when trying to troubleshoot periods of slow system response time, or for monitoring system load. Source code for the Seneca Toolkit: Who's Online? Building Block, is available at
http://www.bbug.ca/.
Duke University [Durham, North Carolina] -- The Auxiliary Services office at Duke University (North Carolina) had two employees who sole responsibility was to empty the quarters in each washing machine and dryer on campus, lug the bags of coins to the office and count the money each and every week. When they weren't busy on their rounds, they were busy repairing the broken money slots on the various machines that were frequently vandalized. Integrating their laundry machines with their Blackboard Transaction System lowered operations costs instantly – there were no quarters to collect and no vandalized coin slots and the two employees were re-allocated within Auxiliary services. Students paid for laundry services using their Duke ID card, which tracked transactions and debited student accounts directly.
Master Your Domain
Find the training you need:
By Delivery
By Role
