USE AND MISUSE OF THE BLACKBOARD WEB PROGRAM IN LARGE COLLEGE EARTH SCIENCE COURSES

The Blackboard web site for curriculum management (www.blackboard.com) achieved its legendary status when it was a free web site for teachers. After becoming fee-based, many schools, including colleges such as Oklahoma State University, chose to independently license the software for their own servers, thus encouraging faculty to continue experimenting with the program. The School of Geology chose Blackboard to web-supplement its large lecture/lab courses; thus becoming the campus model for gen-ed deployment.

“Bb” has a steep learning curve, particularly if all the features are fully utilized. Despite hundreds of hours of development to make Bb work for large courses, we had problems with enrollment and password access (now automated via Central Computing), lack of student access to computers (the Bb server is now available throughout campus and beyond), inserting large AV and PowerPoint files (required learning proper web-conversion techniques), and in administering web-based exams and course assessments.

The following features of Bb were eventually disabled because of lack of use, misuse or because they were duplicated by other services on campus: Calendar, Tasks, Email, Discussion board, Virtual classroom, and the Digital drop-box. These features function best for small classes; our sites would have required excessive work hours in order to be continually updated and properly supervised.

Online grading, assessment, and compilation of course statistics was also difficult to implement. Entering and revising exam questions is an unpleasant inefficient effort that Bb programmers need to improve. Furthermore, our attempt to set up supervised “testing labs” failed, thus we only offer auto-grading “practice” exams on the web.

An evaluation of our trial site was mostly negative because we tried to do too much poorly. Our current web-sites are less complex, more utilized and more appreciated.

Samples of our present Bb offerings will be demonstrated at the presentation. Copies may be obtained.