This term has seen a revolution in the way students organise their study, access their course material and communicate with their tutors.
The advent of the virtual learning environment Blackboard on campus has been a hit with both students and tutors. At the beginning of this session, the law department expected to run four courses on Blackboard. A few weeks into term, they are now running 18 courses on the virtual learning environment and are finding students whose courses are not yet delivered over Blackboard are asking why not and when?
To Stuart Cross, lecturer in the law department, it is easy to see why the software has been such a success. He explains: "Every time a student logs into Blackboard s/he finds their own personal page with courses and material specific to them. It is a familiar environment for them to work from. Blackboard also allows consistent course delivery which is comforting for students especially first years who may find the difference in delivery from course to course a bit daunting."
Dianne Kay, a second year law student said: "Blackboard is accessible, a helpful way to learn and is easy to use even for the least computer-literate students. It makes the demands of this difficult course much easier to manage. Congratulations to the inventor!"
Each course icon contains material which students can easily access for class preparation including set texts, reading lists, messages from tutors, times of tutorials and many other facilities. Stuart says that he finds some of the tools on Blackboard suitable for different levels of teaching. "Blackboard has a handy talk thread option. I decided to use this with my honours class so they could ask me questions without having to come and make an appointment.
But since the whole class has access to the thread, I found that the students started to answer each other's questions and began a discussion about issues in the course between themselves."
It is also easier than staff expected to set up their course on Blackboard. Stuart explains that law anticipated devoting a significant proportion of IT support to staff setting up Blackboard courses. However, they have found that with an easy drag and drop facility staff are able to create their own VLE courses with little support.
Stuart explains however that like any new teaching method, the tutor needs to think through carefully what s/he wants their students to take from the VLE experience and prepare the course delivery properly. "Blackboard contains many facilities which are all very useful. However, for the students to get the most out of using Blackboard, the tutor needs to carefully consider how to combine some of the options to maximise learning. Using every option for every course is unlikely to work."
Another advantage of Blackboard is that students can access course material when they are not in Dundee. This is a useful feature for students who have to travel home at weekends or for those taking resits who are not spending summer in Dundee. Blackboard will also be a vital tool for a smooth transition to semesterisation and modularisation. When students are taking courses in different faculties they will find consistent course delivery a distinct advantage.
There is now a move to buy the improved version of Blackboard and hardware to support it. Any staff member inspired by Stuart's Blackboard experience should contact Richard Parsons in the learning enhancement unit on ext 4265 or log onto Blackboard at http://duxvle.dundee.ac.uk