As announced earlier this semester, DoIT and Visual Arts have partnered on a one-year license to Lynda.com, the popular online software training platform. However, short of simply recommending Lynda.com, how might faculty actually assign and evaluate any external training or competency they'd like their students to attain?
While Lynda.com doesn’t provide built-in assessments per se, it does allow users to print, email, link or otherwise share certificates of completion (aka “badges”) for any of its courses. Also, as a Blackboard content partner, faculty could track students’ progress in Lynda.com through the Blackboard grade center. Both of these options create interesting possibilities for assessment:
For example, before students can even see, let alone submit, an attempt on the first assignment for credit, many UMBC faculty are now requiring students take and pass a quiz over the syllabus as their first online activity. If a passing “syllabus quiz” grade is recorded, the next assignment link is visible to students. If not, it remains hidden. Instructors can determine what constitutes a passing grade, how often students can attempt the quiz, and when it must be completed. Combined with Bb’s “early warning” alerts, students can be notified they haven’t taken or passed the quiz and its expiration.
Once faculty see how adaptive release works, they often develop simple, but effective activities to leverage it. For example, the following “use cases” were presented at a 2012 workshop on how adaptive release can help students take responsibility for learning:
Basically, if instructors implicitly value technological competency, or any skill for that matter, they could explicitly demonstrate why this is important in their assignment criteria for students. As such, faculty could judge effectiveness of technology competency in applying course concepts but rely on Lynda.com to help develop it in their students.
Similarly, faculty concerned about students' incoming math ability could identify and assign students to earn a badge or certificate of completion for a specific module in Khan Academy, the free online education site anyone could access with Facebook or Google accounts -- including UMBC students. Then rinse & repeat steps #2 & #3 above.
Finally, DoIT is working with the campus' Academic Integrity committee to pilot an academic integrity tutorial in Blackboard that leverages the Bb Achievements function, including a certificate of completion that faculty could require students to upload before they can turn in any assignment for credit.
Update: See Joe's UMBC Digital Story at https://youtu.be/Q2cGLtJfxjk
While many have contributed to UMBC's 50 years of excellence, tomorrow the campus will recognize 30 years of service by DoIT's own Joe Kirby, Assistant Vice President for Business Systems, during the annual Service Awards starting at 11:30 a.m. in the UC Ballroom.
One of 16 DoIT staff to be recognized, Joe is especially fitting during the campus' 50th anniversary, as his personal grit perfectly illustrates and has definitely contributed to UMBC’s greatness.
After growing up in Baltimore City and graduating from Archbishop Curley High School, Joe went to College Park from 1972-74. He dropped out to work nine years in supermarket retail, an industry that was being changed by technology. Deciding he wanted to pursue a career in IT, Joe got a job at the National Cash Register (NCR) corporation, advanced to a technical position in four months, but had to give it up when NCR realized he didn’t have a bachelor’s degree. NCR tried to retain him through a part-time position so he could go back to school, but Joe was motivated to earn his degree sooner and quit his job in August to go full time at UMBC in 1983.
“Almost immediately, I felt I’d made a mistake as most classes were filled. One person in particular, Vedette Hull of the Regsitrar’s Office, made a full court press to get me into three courses, which allowed me to get used to school again but not drown.”
Joe worked a midnight shift at a bank doing clerical work, but In 1984, he excelled in a COBOL II class with Gary Reddick, who offered him a job in Administrative Computing as a student programmer. He worked and attended classes until graduating with his BS in Information Systems Management in 1985.
After graduating, UMBC began to directly benefit from Joe’s professional grit and innovation, too. He was offered a programmer I position, and enjoyed the freedom to learn and do as much as his energy level allowed. But when Joe’s mentors, Jim Harvison and Reddick, left UMBC, they recruited him by offering him a 50 percent raise.
“As much as I hated to leave UMBC I was getting ready to get married and start a family. Fortunately, UMBC had a change in leadership and I was recruited to come back in late 1986 in a leadership role and I have been here ever since in various roles.”
The Request Tracker (RT) implementation has been particularly noteworthy. According to VP of IT and CIO Jack Suess, Kirby spent countless hours configuring and evangelizing the use of RT, which went from an IT department ticketing system to one of the most innovative, campus-wide service management solutions in higher education. UMBC now resolves well over 100k tickets each year, which also directly influenced DoIT's strategy to develop an FAQ knowledge management system to help keep our ticket growth in check.
"To achieve these results, it took the patience and perseverance of Joe to work closely with dozens of end users to define their needs and figure out how to make RT support their work," says Suess. "Joe creatively worked with functional offices to develop web-based front ends or other add-ones. What Joe has done over the last five years is incredible, and the results he has achieved are unique in higher education."
Reflecting on his own tenure, Kirby has valued UMBC's supportive leadership, opportunities to innovate, collaborative environment, and mostly, the campus community.
"But I am most proud of the staff I've been allowed to recruit," says Kirby. "I feel strongly that we have the best staff of any university in the system. They are personable yet technical, hard working but fun, and most of all, they are committed to success at UMBC.”
A popular request from faculty is a tool to track student attendance. Many instructors who teach large classes use clickers to assign points for student engagement as a proxy for attendance. However, this method isn’t always conducive for smaller classes.
A new feature to UMBC’s Blackboard site, Qwickly Attendance enables faculty to take attendance that is automatically graded in the Bb Grade Center. Faculty can take attendance using a list on screen or allow students to check in on their own browser, validated by a PIN, during a countdown period set by the instructor.
Perhaps the most appealing feature of Qwickly Attendance is the grade center integration. If set up by the instructor in the Blackboard course shell, Qwickly Attendance will automatically create one grade center column and keep a running grade for each class for the whole semester or per session.
Earlier in the FA2016 semester, 30 courses piloted Qwickly Attendance. In a survey taken after the pilot, faculty who used the tool said it allowed them to focus more on teaching than attendance. Faculty also said the tool encouraged students to be more accountable for their own attendance since they can check their attendance record if the link is added to the course menu. The tool can also send a customizable email to students when they are marked as absent for the day.
Qwickly Attendance is a new tool at UMBC. Instructional Technology provides training during the Skill Builder Boot Camp as well as the Skill Builder Course Management workshop.
For more information about Qwickly Attendance:
Review the Qwickly Attendance FAQs or visit our extensive FAQ collection
Request a consult with a member of the instructional technology team
Blackboard engineers will perform a system upgrade and maintenance on Monday morning, December 26, 2016, from 6:30 AM to 6:30 PM. Blackboard will be offline during this period.
The downtime window will allow UMBC to update all courses to the new Blackboard Collaborate interface, which uses a new browser-based option. More than 900 faculty, staff, and students have tested the new “Ultra Experience” in Blackboard Collaborate since SU2015.
Collaborate with the Ultra Experience opens right in a web browser, so users do not have to install any software to join a session. The tool supports a basic whiteboard, PDF and PowerPoint file sharing, audio/video conferencing, breakout rooms, and polling. Two new roles, Presenter and Captioner, are now included. The Captioner role allows faculty to provide accessible alternatives to audio content for participants who are hearing impaired, as well as for participants whose native language is different from the moderator. The Participant role is designed to allow students to present without giving them full moderator privileges.
Additionally, UMBC students will enjoy the new Bb Student mobile app. The Bb Learn mobile app will be retired at end of 2016 and we encourage UMBC students who wish to access their Blackboard courses via mobile device to download and use the Bb Student app instead. UMBC students can download the Bb Student app for free from the Apple, Google, and Microsoft app stores.
Finally, support for competency-based learning allows instructors to align program objectives to evidence-based assessments. In the future, instructors and students will enjoy improved workflows such as drag & drop files, assignment submission receipts, and assignment reminders for missed work. New course activity reports will also be available for large enrollment courses with filters for groups.
In preparation for this downtime:
Instructors: If you need access to your gradebook during the downtime, please review this FAQ for information on downloading a copy of the Blackboard Grade Center to Excel.
After Blackboard is back online, please clear your Internet browser cache and cookies before logging in using these step-by-step instructions.
The UMBC Blackboard team identified a time period that should have a reduced impact on our users. If our Blackboard site is down longer than expected due to unforeseen circumstances, updates will be posted to this news article. We appreciate your patience as we continue to improve our systems to bring you a better Blackboard experience.
For more information about Instructional Technology:
Follow our Instructional Technology group page
Visit our FAQ collection
Open an RT ticket
Request an appointment with an instructional technology specialist
Concerned about Mother Nature's icy influence this winter? New to UMBC or teaching with Blackboard? Need to refresh your skills? Interested in an existing technology or resource?
The Skill Builder Boot Camp is a comprehensive 2-day workshop to provide hands-on training in core components of Blackboard and supporting technologies (Bb Collaborate, TechSmith Relay, etc.) available to faculty at UMBC.
Learn more about academic continuity with instructional technology tools
Follow our Instructional Technology group page
Visit our FAQ collection
Open an RT ticket
Request an appointment with an instructional technology specialist
Blackboard course shells for WT/SP2017 were created on November 29, 2016.
Bb shells are available for all courses (designated as lecture, lab, field or discussion) listed in the UMBC Schedule of Classes (SOC), provided that there is an instructor of record listed. As new course sections and/or instructors are added to the SOC, corresponding Bb shells are automatically generated overnight. If you need a shell for a research or independent study course, please submit a new course request.
Instructors who teach multiple sections of the same course will find those enrollments merged into one Bb course shell. These sections can be split upon request by an RT ticket. Student enrollment in Bb mirrors the official registration in SA and updates hourly. However, courses are not accessible to students by default until the instructor makes them available.
If you are an instructor, and your name is not associated with the course you are teaching in the SOC, please see your departmental scheduling coordinator to resolve the issue. Once you are listed in the SOC, your Bb course shell will be created automatically. If not, please submit a support request by an RT ticket.
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For 10 of the past 11 years, UMBC has participated in the annual “Undergraduates and IT” study conducted by the Educause Center for Applied Research (ECAR). According to the 2016 ECAR findings, 183 institutions, including UMBC, participated in the survey, totaling 71,641 undergraduate students from 25 countries. Of the 452 UMBC student respondents in 2016, 82% said they their overall technology experience was Good or Excellent, which is slightly higher than our peer and other U.S. institutions, while about two thirds of UMBC students believe the technology that they use in their courses now will prepare them adequately for their chosen careers. Overall, UMBC’s survey results mirror ECAR’s key findings that include the following:
Student ownership of digital devices continues to grow despite approaching market saturation for laptops and smartphones. From 2015 to 2016, smartphone ownership increased from 92% to 96% and laptop ownership rose from 91% to 93%.
Device ownership is greater among students than the general public.
Students use their devices extensively and view them as important to their academic success.
Students’ choices for the type of learning environment in which they claim to learn the most have remained remarkably stable over the past several years. An absolute majority of students said they prefer courses that have some blended aspect to their design. Only 10% of students prefer entirely face-to-face courses, and 7% prefer fully online.
Female and first-generation students are significantly more likely to have their levels of engagement, enrichment, and efficacy raised by technology.
ECAR’s 2016 “study hub” has also provided a very informative infographic, presentation slides and live webinar today at 1 p.m.
Over the years, DoIT has tracked the decline in desktop computing and the rise of the laptop and then the cell phone. Between 2006 and 2016, UMBC smart phone ownership has increased amongst students from 6% to 97% and laptop ownership is now at 98%. There is now a near ubiquitous connectivity as nearly two thirds of all students own three or more network enabled devices, and technology and the network connectivity at UMBC allows for relatively unfettered access. Indeed, 71% of survey respondents rated the ease of login to wi-fi as either good or excellent, which is about 9% better than other schools in UMBC’s peer group and all U.S. institutions. ECAR has contacted UMBC regarding this exemplary rating to consult other institutions on our successful model.
UMBC’s historic data show that faculty use the Blackboard learning management system (LMS) either daily or weekly and the overwhelming majority of student respondents either agree (44.4%) or strongly agree (27.8%) that the LMS is very useful as a tool to enhance student learning. Most of these users (61.8%) expressed overall satisfaction with the LMS (ECAR Faculty Survey, 2015). A little over half of all students responding to the 2016 survey, however, indicate that they wished their instructors used the LMS more.
A Gap in Faculty and Student Perceptions of Mobile Computing
One finding that has emerged each year is a growing gap among students and faculty regarding the use and effectiveness of mobile devices in the classroom. Generally, students view technology as helpful to their studies, but 40 percent of the 2016 study respondents said mobile devices can be distracting in class. Still, this is slightly less than what might be expected from what faculty have reported in terms of how such devices are managed. For example, in the 2014 ECAR study, 54% of faculty said mobile devices can enhance learning, but half ban or discourage smartphones, and only 38% encouraged or required laptops, even though 86% of all students owned a smartphone and 90% owned a laptop. In 2015, the last year faculty were surveyed, ECAR identified a gap in faculty perceptions and student use of mobile devices:
In terms of smartphone usage, faculty are fairly accurate in perceiving that students use them to connect to course materials (36%) and to take notes (13%), but they overestimate their use for nonclass activities by 19%. Based on students’ self-reports, faculty overestimate student use of laptops for accessing course materials by 7%, note-taking by 15%, and nonclass activities by 20%. (2015 Faculty and IT Study Key Findings, p. 19).
During a 2015 Faculty Learning Community meeting sponsored by the Faculty Development Center, DoIT presented an alternative to banning mobile devices by sharing an effective practice from one faculty member: marking a student as “absent” and deducting participation points if an instructor has to ask him or her to put away a mobile device three times in one day. From the instructor’s syllabus:
“If the instructor notes that you are engaging in the above activities, he or she will ask you to stop. If you need to be told to stop more than three times per class, you will be listed as absent for the day. After three such “absent” listings, your final grade will be lowered by 10 points, or approximately one letter rank.”
As the ECAR findings clearly indicate, UMBC is not alone in reconciling differences in faculty and student perception’s of technology’s effectiveness. However, we welcome feedback and suggestions on how best to help turn a current issue into a potential opportunity to enhance student learning.
]]>The DoIT Technology Support Center is looking to hire additional consultants to work during the Winter and Spring. Please see our job description below and visit our job posting on UMBCWorks to apply. The position will be open for applications until December 12th. (Search for TSC Student Consultant.)
Technology Support Center (TSC) student consultants are the first points of technical contact for the UMBC community and those who do well often go on to work in other areas of the Division of Information Technology (DoIT). Minimally, consultants are expected to provide initial triage and support for a wide-range of information technologies including accounts, hardware, instructional technologies, networking, software, telecommunications, and basic web development.