Why should educators spend their time recreating Education 1.0 using technology at the substitution and augmentation levels when there are tools, techniques, and opportunities to modify and redefine educational technology integration for a richer, more engaging Education 2.0 or 3.0? For more info I highly encourage you to read SAMR as a Framework for Moving Towards Education 3.0

For busy working people who are looking to break into the massage therapy industry, Globe University-Eau Claire has a new option. Starting with the summer quarter, students in the massage therapy diploma program will be able to take classes on Friday nights and Saturdays, freeing up typical work hours while they take steps toward a new career. Students will be able to maintain full-time status during the program, which kicks off July 13, 2015, at Globe’s Eau Claire campus, according to Joan Hamilton, executive program chair. The idea for the new schedule, already implemented at Globe University-La Crosse, came from students who wanted to enroll in a massage therapy program but still needed to continue working. "We wanted to give people more options—to work their job during the week and take weekend classes," Hamilton said. "They needed a bit more flexibility." The Friday night and Saturday classes are longer and feature the specific techniques of massage therapy, while online courses supplement the overall curriculum. It’s still a one-year program, and students will learn all they need to become certified in the state of Wisconsin. Students in Globe’s massage therapy diploma program take the state exam, which is paid for through student fees, while they’re still in school. "It’s a pretty sweet deal," Hamilton said. "You can get it done in a year and start practicing." So far, the response to the new schedule has been strong at the La Crosse campus, she said. Students who enroll will be able to learn in spa and therapeutic settings. On-campus courses include: Kinesiology Swedish Massage Pregnancy and Special Populations Deep Tissue and Sports Clinic Myofascial Release Thai/Energy Work Anatomy and Physiology for Massage Hot Stone and Spa Techniques Online coursework covers other general education requirements and further massage-related classes. Globe University also offers an associate degree in massage therapy; both programs provide students with hands-on learning opportunities and the chance to learn from instructors with experience in the industry. Massage therapy is a growing field, with a 23 percent increase in the number of jobs projected through 2022, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. For more information about the massage therapy programs at Globe University, contact admissions or call 1-877-303-6060. The post Globe University-Eau Claire to Launch Night, Weekend Classes for Massage Therapy Diploma appeared first on Globe University Blog.

Interested in the current and future state of colleges and universities? What about online education, and its potential impact on learning? Well you’ll love this episode with Phil Hill!  Don’t miss his insights on these issues and much more.  Enjoy! Guest Bio: Phil Hill (@PhilOnEdTech) is an educational technology consultant and analyst who has spent the last 10 years advising in online education and educational technology markets. As an independent consultant and analyst, Phil helps higher education institutions develop effective strategies to understand and implement online education programs. Phil’s clients have included the University of Iowa, UCLA, California State University, DeVry University, Colorado Community College System,University of Maryland University College, among others. Phil is also an author, blogger at e-Literate, and speaker, and he has become recognized in the educational technology community for his insights into the broader education market trends and issues. In addition to e-Literate, Phil has also written for EDUCAUSE Review and been quoted at Inside Higher Ed and Washington Business Journal. Show Notes: (1:55)  Phil’s Journey (7:39)  What are the 3 big problems that online education is helping to solve for universities? (13:05)  Digging into IPEDS vs Babson Survey data to paint the landscape of online learning in higher education (18:21)  Where do you think online education will be in the next 5 years? (24:00)  City College of San Francisco accreditation case *Too big to fail? (36:00)  What gets you most excited about the future of education? (37:10)  What gets you most frustrated about the future of education? (38:52)  If you could have dinner with anyone you admire, past or present, who would it be and why? *Dinner date:  Ernest Hemingway, Winston Churchill Shout Outs: MindWires Consulting Audrey Watters & Hack Education Michael Feldstein & the e-Literate Blog Pearson Learning Solutions Liberty University Grand Canyon University StraighterLine Propero Clayton Christensen article on disruptive innovation in higher education In The Telling For more episodes featuring thought leaders in education visit MeetEducationProject.com, subscribe to the podcast on iTunes and follow Nick DiNardo on Twitter.

As a college student, you’ve already made education a top priority in your life. You know the value of a college degree, and you’ve made sacrifices to attend school either on campus or online. But why stop there? Education should be a lifelong pursuit, not a means to an end. Knowledge is power, and these days, supplementing your college education with free online resources will put you ahead of the curve. You just have to know where to look. Here are nine free resources for college students. 1.  Coursera Partnering with 114 top universities from around the world, Coursera provides its 10 million users with a wide range of free online courses. You can watch video lectures, connect with other students or instructors, and complete peer-graded assessments to solidify what you have learned. Even if you already have a college degree, it’s never too late to expand your knowledge and upgrade your resume. 2.  OEDb OEDb, which stands for Open Education Database, offers a comprehensive collection of college rankings as well as a variety of free online courses. Browse its website to find thousands of free lectures and full courses across a range of subjects, including business, health, education, computer science and more. 3.  ALISON This global online learning community focuses on empowering users with the knowledge and skills needed to advance in their careers. With five million users, it offers categories in finance, business, health, languages, personal development and more. Graduates of ALISON’s courses have even stated that the website helped them get a college placement, a promotion or a new job. 4.  Khan Academy Khan Academy prides itself on being a "personalized learning resource for all ages." Chock-full of instructional videos and practice exercises (over 100,000 of them, to be exact), it lets users study a variety of topics at their own pace, including math, science, economics, finance, arts and humanities, and computing. Millions of students from around the world are learning for free with Khan Academy, since its learning materials are translated into nearly 40 different languages. 5.  edX EdX strives to provide the highest quality education to anyone who wants it. Its open source platform gives users access to over 300 free courses from top professors and universities, on topics such as biology, chemistry, electronics, engineering, nutrition, literature, philosophy and more. The website is also an interactive community, allowing users to meet fellow classmates who are also enrolled in the free online courses. 6.  Academic Earth Much like the websites discussed above, Academic Earth wants to bring the amazing world of academia to those who love learning. Its free courses cover a broad range of subjects, from accounting and management to physics and marketing. Whether you want to add more skills to your resume or you simply want to learn more about a certain topic, Academic Earth has got you covered. 7.  Open2Study Open2Study offers 49 free courses to choose from, each one lasting four weeks. Courses include videos, reading materials and assessments to help you measure your progress. You can even invite friends to take courses with you. The community team posts questions and discussion topics on the classroom forum that encourages engagement among fellow users. 8.  Open Culture Founded in 2006, Open Culture collects and shares free resources from all over the internet. Its mission is to "bring together high quality cultural and educational media for the worldwide lifelong learning community." Some of its major collections of education media include audiobooks, eBooks, movies and online courses. You can even take free language lessons. 9.  LearnVest Everyone needs to know how to handle money, and this site helps people do just that. Whether you want financial tips for your professional or personal life, this site offers free classes on topics such as budgeting, buying a home, insurance and investing. The video lectures also include accompanying worksheets that help you review what you’ve learned. The post 9 Free Resources for College Students appeared first on Globe University Blog.

The Internet opened up huge opportunities for tech savvy tutors not that long ago. If you had a basic understanding of how to set up a website, a bit of SEO and online marketing knowledge, chances were high to grow a tutoring business from a local customer base into an international operation. Skype, tutoring platforms and marketplaces, YouTube and social media represent only a handful of the new tools tutors had at their disposal. Glory days. Unfortunately, the Internet gives and the Internet takes away. This could be in the form of Google changing its algorithm, leading to the death of education marketplaces, like TeachStreet and countless other small businesses, because of a drop in organic traffic. But nowadays the biggest threat to human tutors are their technology driven counterparts and a growing crowd of interconnected learners. Rise of the Machines Any teacher that can be replaced by a machine should be! - Arthur C. Clarke, Electronic Tutors 1980 This quote by Arthur C. Clarke has been used heavily to underline the inevitable victory of machines over humans in our education system. While we can, and should, argue about this notion in public and higher education, I think it is a fair observation for the tutoring space. People who get paid by learners to teach have a tendency to retard the progress of their students (knowingly or subconsciously) for obvious reasons. Another problem with live tutoring is that tutor and student have to agree on a date and time, which adds inconveniences like cancellations and lateness to the mix. Last but not least the cost of live tutoring is not insignificant, either. Therefore, students who want to progress at a faster rate have to pay more as they need to book more individual lessons. Wisdom of the Crowd And just as the Internet provided tutors with new opportunities to grow their business, the Internet started to offer alternatives to live tutoring. One could argue that the beginning of the demise of live tutors lays in peer learning communities. In the education space language learning communities like Livemocha and busuu.com made the point early on. Compared to tutoring marketplaces like Myngle, italki or eduFire who had thousands of users, growth of learning communities was through the roof with users signing up in the millions. Besides, the connection between learners who could meet online for language exchange or correct each others exercises, communities also offered different self-paced courses, enabling language learners to study at their own pace, no time commitment to meet with a teacher, tutor necessary. And with the addition of mobile apps, the user base of busuu.com quickly grew in the tens of millions. I will further explore this trend of mobile language learning in another post, especially the rise of Duolingo, which just recently surpassed 70 million users (or better put, people who signed up to the service). Adapt or Die Back to tutors and live lessons on the Internet. Keeping all the issues above in mind, what is the future of live tutoring online? One thing that is certain, prices for live tutoring will continue to fall. The only exception to this are highly qualified tutors who offer niche training, especially in the corporate sector. The vast majority of online tutors, especially in the language learning space, will have to adapt to rates of $15 or even $10 per hour. I also think that the length of lessons will shorten as new services, like tutoring on-demand, will grow in their popularity. Instead of booking a 30 minute lesson in advance, learners will look for on-demand tutors who offer a quick 10 or 15 minute call and work on a specific problem. This should become especially interesting in the STEM tutoring space. On the other hand, we can also see new forms of live tutoring on the rise. Yoga lessons for example have been a growing vertical in the past three years. Instead of working out in the gym, people connect via VoIP and take the lessons in their living room. The same is true for crafting and other creative verticals. All of the above also implies that, just like universities that produce MOOCs, tutors have to invest into more and better technology. A 0.5 megapixel webcam won’t cut the mustard. Tutors will need a film-studio-like environment, good lighting, multiple cameras, probably a camera operator, very good audio quality, reliable broadband connection etc. The good news here is that prices for the equipment go down all the time, so it’s up to the tutor to invest in herself and learn the new tools of the trade - which might come in the form of taking a self-paced online course. Picture License  Some rights reserved by sarahgb(theoriginal)

Despite assumptions of a boundless national market, online learning is mainly a regional endeavor. This infographic by Eduventures highlights some key building blocks of a successful regional online strategy.

By Katie Heisler, business student and student ambassador Deciding which business college is the right fit is always hard to make, no matter the age of the person about to embark on this new adventure. It can be easy to become so focused on the classes and curriculum offered by these institutions that you forget to look at the other things, like the events, support and atmosphere, that make up the college experience. It is often difficult to even find out about these aspects in order to make an informed choice. Katie Heisler using the Globe University-Wausau campus library resources Globe University-Wausau offers great programs with solid curriculum and hands-on learning. I am having a wonderful experience with the business program myself. But this campus also offers amazing things beyond the curriculum. Support The best thing about Globe University is the fact the instructors and staff truly care about each student who attends their campuses. Globe University-Wausau’s faculty and staff understand that many of their students are nontraditional, which means that their students often have families, homes, job and other commitments outside of school, and juggling schoolwork, too, can be overwhelming. Students looking for a place to study with minimal noise head to the study center off of the commons. The comfortable setting in the study center include couches, computers and tables. The study center is staffed by instructors who are available if help is needed - just look for the schedule posted outside the study center door. Tutoring is provided at Globe University-Wausau as well. Any student who is struggling with a class needs only to make an appointment to see the dean of education to make arrangements for individual tutoring with an instructor. Connections Cody Tokarski and Maurice Steffens, massage therapy students, making use of the study center Globe University-Wausau strives for their students to be successful so they always find ways to appreciate and recognize the hardworking students that attend the campus. Globe University-Wausau hosts a student appreciation event about halfway through each quarter to give students a chance to breathe and relax. This gives students a chance to enjoy getting to know that staff that works behind the scenes. It’s a fun way to mingle, joke and enjoy some free food with the Globe family. The faculty and staff of Globe University-Wausau want all students to feel a sense of community on the campus and beyond. They encourage their students to be involved in the campus clubs and to participate in campus-wide events. Whenever Globe University-Wausau is involved in or aware of community events, students receive emails that encourage us to get involved in something that makes us part of a whole. Service learning and applied learning projects are regularly part of the curriculum at Globe University, and Community Service Day is an annual event. More When most students hear the word "library" they automatically assume it’s a place for studying and resources. That’s not all there is to the Wausau campus library - it also has a very resourceful and energetic librarian who is willing to help students whenever it’s needed. Nora Craven, the librarian, isn’t just the go-to person for resources, but she’s also the person to go to for some fun! Nora the librarian offers trivia every day, which can result in winning some prizes and candy. Don’t forget to read the blogs on our campus website — they just might be your ticket to win! Staff and faculty of Globe University -Wausau -photo by Donna Zerovec When students need a break from the hard work of classes and homework, the library is the place to be around the 15th of every month. All students, staff and faculty are invited to "bring their game" to the library for Game Day. This is a social time with food, beverages and as many games as you want to play! If you have a break during the day, you are welcome to stop in and enjoy some laughs. This is just a glimpse of what is available at Globe University-Wausau in addition to the classes and curriculum. Globe University has many other resources to offer, so don’t hesitate to ask! The post Globe University-Wausau: A Student’s Perspective appeared first on Globe University Blog.

Name: Openwords Website: www.openwords.com Headquarters: Bloomington, USA Vertical: Language Learning Tech: Web App, Mobile App Introduce your startup and give a short description of what you are doing. Openwords is building a foreign language learning app with open data. Openwords will be free and open source and we're committed to learner data privacy. Openwords has mined content for >1000 languages. 中文, to Abenaki, to English... Openwords has open data, so we can mine existing open databases (e.g. Wiktionary) and re-purpose that data for language learning. Openwords app: The Openwords app design has different learning modules. We have single word problems like hearing, review, self-evaluate recognition, type-evaluation. We have simple sentence translation problems in development, and a handwriting learning module for Chinese in development utilizing the Wikimedia Stroke Order project. As Openwords develops new learning modules or games, we can add them in. We will be open source, so others can build learning modules as well. Who are the founders, how did you meet, what are your different roles in the startup. The Founder & CEO (me, Mark Bogonovich) is a scientist and educator. I'm a biologist by training with ten years of teaching experience. Shenshen Han, the CTO of Openwords is a veteran in EdTech, working in the Creativity Labs at Indiana University, building software teaching children biology. Shenshen has two masters degrees in computer science and ten years experience managing large international teams. Our roles: I developed the concept for Openwords, and have been the person organizing and motivating our team in Bloomington, IN. Shenshen and I recognized we shared similar values and commitment to open education. Shenshen is responsible for most implementation & development. Openwords also has a strong group of UX masters students. How was the idea for your startup born? Here is how the idea for Openwords originated. I became interested in learning languages for personal reasons. My partner is a native speaker of Chinese. I realized that many languages get overlooked by mobile developers, and that in fact these languages add up to a lot of under-served people (Infographic #1). Openwords is an application of the data scraping methods I applied in biology in my doctoral research, but to the problem of providing free and open language learning educational content for all peoples. Here is the basic plan: Find free and open data used for purpose A (Dictionary purposes) Scrape that data, re-organize the data for purpose B (Mobile Language learning) Keep it free, improve the data if possible, and share it back. Enjoy. What is the main problem in education that you aim to solve. We aim to solve two problems. We want free & open source language learning educational material for all languages. There are few educational resources for many languages, corresponding to a large populations (Infographic #1). Open data is a strategy for scaling learning material to these languages rapidly, because much of the required data already exists. Openwords will also be available for the major languages too, of course. Who are your main competitors? What sets you apart from them? Duolingo is a major competitor. Flash card apps are also competitors, but Openwords is focused on language (like Duolingo). I recently summarized differences between Openwords and Duolingo. A) Openwords is open source and free, Duolingo is just free. Duolingo controls its language incubator program. Openwords is opening it up. We build and offer curricula, but you can build your own. You *own* Openwords content. This alone is sufficient differentiation. B) The design of Openwords promotes learning autonomy. What does this mean practically? Openwords will allow learners and teachers to choose what words they want to learn. Freedom is not a "trade-off" with guidance. We will have a default curricula, and if you really want, you can still *decide* to be told what to do. Teacher autonomy is pretty critical for use in classrooms. How could we tell someone with a masters degree in teaching Swahili what to teach? C) Duolingo uses crowdsourcing to build content. Openwords uses crowdsourced data that *already exists*. That is why we really have mined content for >1000 languages. In which markets / regions are you active. What markets / regions are next. Openwords has mined a lot of open data. We are finishing the design and development of the Openwords app that reads this data and presents problems to the learner. Our incubator program is attracting a lot of interest. If we organize this process well, we should be able to have apps in many languages. Who is your target audience. This has been a difficult question for Openwords to answer. In some sense Openwords has obviated the problem of specialization. However, we do recognize that we need to focus on certain regions. We believe we can focus on China, Hong Kong, Taiwan given Openwords' ethnic composition. Second, for many languages for which we now have content, there aren't any competitors. Our research has shown that these regions are rapidly adopting smartphones. We'd also like your thoughts. How do you engage with your target audience. How do you convert them into users of your product. Language learning is nearly a necessity for many people. People may be learning a language because their spouse is a native speaker of a language, or they may need to understand a language for work. For many languages, our goal is to simply extend and scale basic functionality to these people. Many people may want to learn English, (e.g. Lao->English) and the do not have mobile resources in their native language. For language combinations that are more competitive (e.g. English->French), we believe our social good and open data purpose will be persuasive to educators. Openwords' freedom orientation should lead to advantages. People can organize curricula as they wish, and edtech developers can develop new learning modules. What is your business model. How much does your product / service cost. The Openwords app is free & open source. Our goal is to attach revenue models to the Openwords app that support our open data and social good purpose. In this end, we are collaborating on a project initiated by Creative Commons called the Open Business Model Canvas (a derivative project of the Business Model Canvas). There is also an active Google group. Here are two concepts we will be exploring. Teacher Module. A website (outside of the Openwords application) where teachers can log in, and view the performance data of their students on the Openwords app. Teachers will be able to make sure their students are learning out of the classroom. Connect learners with job opportunities. We could connect learners to job opportunities, and do so consensually and while respecting learner privacy. We would effectively operate in the recruitment industry. This would also operate as a great motivator for people using the Openwords app. If you raised funding, how much did you raise. Who are your investors. If not, are you planning to raise funding. We are raising seed money via Kickstarter. We may raise more money via crowd-vesting. We will only bring in investors who will not interfere with our social mission. Are there milestones you are especially proud of and would like to share. Openwords' back-end is largely designed and implemented. We mined content for >1000 languages (largely from the Wiktionary). Our incubator program has reviewed the English-Farsi data, and flagged errors and other issues. We are now in the process of doing the same in several other languages. We hope to back-channel any improvements in the Openwords db back to the sources. We created a prototype app in 2014, ran user testing and decided on a redesign for 2015. We are also proud about opening up our design process. We have mockups available. What are the next steps in growing your startup. Kickstarter. Finish the Openwords app design and development. Incubator program & build community. Openwords has a lot of content, particular for word-word translations. We need to create or mine many simple sentence translation problems, and we need to organize our data into curricula. How can people get in touch with you. 413-884-4467 email: contact@openwords.com www.facebook.com/Openwords Ello.co handles: @openwords @marcbogonovich Twitter handles: @Openwords @MarcBogonovich

For the second year in a row, Globe University-Woodbury campus has committed to be the Title Sponsor of the Woodbury Area Chamber of Commerce 29th Annual High School Scholarship Tournament on June 8 at Prestwick Golf Club. The goal of this tournament is to help support higher education in the Woodbury community by awarding local high school students with $1,000 scholarships toward their future education. Globe University-Woodbury staff at the 27th Annual Scholarship Golf Tournament. "As the chair of the Woodbury Area Chamber of Commerce’s Business Education Partnership Committee, I’m honored to be the title sponsor for the 29th Annual Scholarship Golf Tournament," said Lisa Palermo, campus director of the Globe University-Woodbury campus. "It’s our goal to not only support our local community, but to encourage and support higher education to high school students." This will be Globe University-Woodbury campus’ fifth year sponsoring the tournament, and the second year as Title Sponsor. This well-attended golf tournament is to help support education in the local community by awarding six local students with scholarships toward their college education. With already more than 80 golfers committed to the tournament, President of the Woodbury Area Chamber of Commerce, Barbara Tuccitto Warren commented that this tournament is a great opportunity for businesses to receive recognition by our local community by sponsoring a hole and/or buying a round of golf at a spectacular 18-hole golf course with lunch and prizes while supporting our local high school students pursue their future education.   The post Globe Commits to Title Sponsorship of Chamber’s Scholarship Golf Tournament appeared first on Globe University Blog.

The online assessment tools of Blackboard can be utilized to facilitate meaningful and memorable learning activities for students. These online assessment tools include: surveys, test, quizzes, and electronic submission of assignments. What are the most efficient and effective uses of the Blackboard assessment tools? What recommendations exist for reinforcing academic integrity and providing meaningful feedback? During this online workshop offered 3/26/14 we sought to answer these questions and share tips and best practices for assessing student learning using Blackboard. The workshop archive may be viewed below. The following is list of tips and recommended best practices for assessing student learning using Blackboard discussed in greater depth during the workshop archive. Please feel free to leave a comment and add your tip(s) to the list! General Online Assessment Tips Avoid high-stakes objective assessments online When developing online assessments in Blackboard, it is important to consider the security of the exam and to make every effort to remove opportunities for students to cheat. Blackboard does not inherently prevent students from printing the questions of an exam or copying and pasting the questions to word processing application for printing. Have students complete a practice version of any required online assessment to become familiar with the technology Your students may or may not have ever completed an online assessment. Don’t assume that they are familiar with how to complete an online assessment. Offer a sample or practice version of the type of assessment you plan to require to allow students the opportunity to become familiar with the technology. Deploy assessment link(s) in the same folder as unit content For ease of access for students, consider keeping links to assessments with other instructional content for a given unit. Basically, create a folder for each unit and include in that folder all the information items, instructions, and links to the assessments so students easily find them. Reuse and re-purpose assessment types once configured in Blackboard While course content changes over time, you may be able to reuse some of the types of assessments you use among courses. For example, a pre-course survey might be able to be reused in multiple Blackboard courses. Whenever possible, look to reuse created assessments by either copying and exporting/importing from one Blackboard course to another. Provide meaningful feedback to students Studies have shown that among the most valued elements of any course are the interactions that students have with the faculty member. Providing meaningful feedback to online assessments is a great way to foster teaching presence in an online course. Remember there is no guaranteed approach to prevent cheating online When developing online assessments in Blackboard, it is important to consider the security of the exam and to make every effort to remove opportunities for students to cheat. While there are a few tips for making it more difficult to cheat, the current version of Blackboard does not inherently prevent students from printing the questions of an exam or copying and pasting the questions to word processing application for printing. Surveys A survey within Blackboard is a non-graded assessment tool that records answers anonymously. Blackboard will record when the survey is taken but will not associate answers with an individual user; no individual feedback can be provided for a survey. Use the Survey tool in Blackboard whenever you want to gather aggregate responses from students The survey tool is a simple way to gather feedback from students at the beginning, middle, or end of the course. Also, if introducing a new pedagogical approach or tool, consider conducting a survey of students to gain their perspective on overall effectiveness. Remind students that surveys are anonymous Surveys can be especially useful to gain authentic feedback from students, especially if they are reassured that their feedback is anonymous. Remind students that you can’t see their individual responses, just a confirmation of whether or not they completed the survey. If survey is more than 5 questions, consider displaying 1 question at a time For large surveys, they can be more manageable for students if displayed 1 question at a time rather than all at once. If desiring to share findings with students, copy/paste results into Word to post in Blackboard While there currently is no easy way to automatically display aggregate results from a survey to students, the results that you see as an instructor can be copied/pasted into a Word document and then posted in Blackboard for students to view if desired. Tests/Quizzes The Tests tool in Blackboard is the tool to use for automatically graded assessments. Scores are automatically added to the Blackboard Grade Center. Faculty have several options for creating tests, including typing into the question-by-question format provided by Blackboard, copying and pasting questions into the Blackboard format (which allows one to work offline and take advantage of the word processor’s spell check), and uploading questions in a pre-established format. The term "test" is used in Blackboard to refer to any graded assessment (formative or summative) consisting of more than one question. Format questions in MS Word and import using CSI’s Blackboard Quiz Generator When transferring existing assessment questions from Microsoft Word to Blackboard, consider using College of Southern Idaho’s Blackboard Quiz Generator. This tool was developed to help you create quizzes for Blackboard. It allows you to type up the quiz offline in a program like Word or Notepad and not have to go through the trouble of making long quizzes via the Blackboard web interface. Simply follow the documentation provided for formatting existing questions and then copy/paste into the generator’s text box. Simply type or paste your quiz in the text area and click the Create Quiz button. This will produce a zip file that you can import into the Pool Manager in Blackboard. Add test questions to pools for easy reuse and expansion Creating question pools in Blackboard of questions provides added options for question reuse as well as the ability to export questions for reuse or repurpose in other courses. Check with your textbook publisher to see if they offer question pools for your textbook Some publishers now offer electronic pools of questions organized by textbook chapter that are pre-formatted for Blackboard. Create tests from random blocks of question pools whenever possible To further deter cheating, create online tests that pull questions at random from question pools. This not only further individualizes each student’s assessment, but also makes it very easy to expand the possible questions included in future assessments. Faculty can simply add more questions to the question pools to in effect expand the possible questions to be included in the test(s) built from them. Pay attention to test options when deploying Creating a test in Blackboard is essentially a 2-step process: 1) Build the test; 2) Deploy the test. After deploying the test, be sure to modify the test options to match the desired assessment experience. (e.g. timed test; 1 attempt, customized feedback) Randomize questions Among the many test options, choosing to randomize the questions will ensure that each student will be presented with the quiz questions in a random order. Discussions Provide clear expectations for how discussions will be assessed Asynchronous discussion online via the Blackboard Discussion Board is a very well established approach to assessing student learning online. Be very clear to students at the beginning of the course what the expectations are for the online discussion and how their contributions will be assessed. Use Blackboard discussion grader; grade by forum, not thread Blackboard’s discussion grading capabilities allows for easy collection of student contributions to a forum and for assigning a score for student posts. When enabling discussion grading, select the option to grade by forum as Blackboard will then only add a single column to the grade center for the forum rather than columns for each thread. It is highly advised to avoid grading by thread unless for a very specific discussion where students can only reply to instructor-created threads. After entering scores for contributions, enter comments directly in the Grade Center The discussion grading in Blackboard 8 only allows for faculty to add grade with a score but not enter any comments. However, after entering the scores for contributions, comments can be added to the scores at the corresponding column in the Grade Center. Assignments Use the Assignment Manager in Blackboard for collecting student work electronically The Assignment Manager in Blackboard enables users with the role of Faculty or TA in Blackboard to create Assignments in any content areas and post them for Students to complete. Creating an assignment automatically creates an item in the Grade Center that holds all the submitted student assignments. If desiring specific formatting, provide template with assignment instructions When creating an assignment, attach to the assignment any instruction or template files students are to use in completing the assignment. Doing so, students won’t need to search other content areas within the course to find the needed files. Download submitted assignments for offline viewing/grading Details for viewing and downloading all submitted assignments are available here. Enter feedback electronically in submitted files & return to the students via the Blackboard Assignment There are two approaches to providing feedback to submitted assignments within Blackboard: 1) Enter feedback in the comments box back to the student for the given assignment; 2) Attach a revised version of the file submitted by the student that includes comments directly in the file. Consider what format of feedback would be most helpful to your students as well as be most efficient for you to provide. Many faculty find that entering feedback directly in submitted files, either using simply a different color of text or an advanced commenting feature such as the Track Changes option is MS Word is the most efficient approach to providing detailed feedback. If attaching feedback to assignment, remind students to view attached file(s) It may not be obvious to students that feedback is available in the attached file(s) that have been returned back to them. Simply enter in the comments box back to the student that the attached file contains feedback. SafeAssignments SafeAssign is a free plagiarism prevention tool that allows for you to protect the originality of work and ensure a fair playing ground for all your students. SafeAssign is integrated with Blackboard and prevents plagiarism by detecting unoriginal content in students papers within your existing teaching and learning environment. SafeAssign can also further deter plagiarism by creating opportunities to educate students on proper attribution and citations while properly leveraging the wealth of information at their disposal. Use SafeAssign for substantial written assignments For any original writing assignments, consider using SafeAssign instead of the Assignment tool. Complete details are available here. Inform students in the syllabus of the requirement to use SafeAssign As the faculty member, you can choose to require the use SafeAssign in your course. Consider including a statement in your syllabus in accordance with your institution’s academic integrity policy notifying students that their written work will be checked for plagiarism. Create draft version for students to submit to first to self-check their work Draft versions of SafeAssignments are created in nearly the exact same way as regular SafeAssignments are. Faculty can choose to set up SafeAssignments as drafts, allowing students to submit papers without storing them to the institutional document archive. Otherwise, if students were to submit the paper again, it would have a 100% match against itself. Make originality reports viewable by students It’s helpful to remind students of the benefits to using SafeAssign by ensuring that they are able to view a copy of the originality report that SafeAssign generates for their submitted assignment. They’ll be able to see the same originality report as the faculty member should there be any issue. What additional tips do you have to share about assessing student learning using Blackboard? Leave a comment and share your tips! For archives of other online workshops offered by NIU Faculty Development and Instructional Design Center, visit our YouTube channel. Follow Jason Rhode on Twitter @jrhode