2East Newsletter

Published every two weeks, October 10th, 2001

The Growing Use of Blackboard at NU

As the use of the Blackboard course management system continues to grow at Northwestern (at a 35% annual rate through the past academic year), faculty and administrators are exploring the use of a wider variety of features of this popular web-based system. A number of new uses for Blackboard were implemented over the summer, including an initiative to support the WCAS freshman seminar program, the administration of the math placement exam for the McCormick School, sharing of internship field experiences among all the students in Medill's Integrated Marketing Program, and the deployment of 20 distance learning courses taught through the School of Education and Social Policy's Center for Talent Development.

The summer experience with using Blackboard in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences freshman seminar and advisory program has been expecially innovative in a number of ways. Working closely with the freshman dean and WCAS staff, AT's Learning Support Services unit set up Blackboard sites in the early summer for each of the 72 freshman seminars being taught in the fall. Through email communications from WCAS, incoming students were invited to introduce themselves over the web, and instructors were encouraged through LSS-taught workshops and messages from the Dean to begin communicating with their students. Some faculty used the opportunity of such early communication to issue reading assignments over the summer and to encourage online discussions in order to get students talking among each other about the topic of the seminar. Librarians in the Collection Management division were also offered opportunities to contribute to the seminars through providing subject-specific electronic resources in the "External Links" area of each freshman seminar course site.

AT is partnering with the WCAS Office of Studies to evaluate students' responses to the early contact enabled through the Blackboard course sites. The summer project has already led to considerably wider use of Blackboard among WCAS faculty who heard about the service through the freshman seminar initiative.

For more information, please contact blackboard@northwestern.edu or click on the link below.

IN THIS ISSUE: The Growing Use of Blackboard at NU Free Technology Presentations & Workshops for the Weeks of Oct. 15th and 22nd Medill Survey Developers Make the Most of On-line Survey Tool's Useful Features Getting to Know 2East: Michael Goettsch *Archives*		*Published every two weeks, October 10th, 2001* The Growing Use of Blackboard at NU As the use of the Blackboard course management system continues to grow at Northwestern (at a 35% annual rate through the past academic year), faculty and administrators are exploring the use of a wider variety of features of this popular web-based system. A number of new uses for Blackboard were implemented over the summer, including an initiative to support the WCAS freshman seminar program, the administration of the math placement exam for the McCormick School, sharing of internship field experiences among all the students in Medill's Integrated Marketing Program, and the deployment of 20 distance learning courses taught through the School of Education and Social Policy's Center for Talent Development. The summer experience with using Blackboard in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences freshman seminar and advisory program has been expecially innovative in a number of ways. Working closely with the freshman dean and WCAS staff, AT's Learning Support Services unit set up Blackboard sites in the early summer for each of the 72 freshman seminars being taught in the fall. Through email communications from WCAS, incoming students were invited to introduce themselves over the web, and instructors were encouraged through LSS-taught workshops and messages from the Dean to begin communicating with their students. Some faculty used the opportunity of such early communication to issue reading assignments over the summer and to encourage online discussions in order to get students talking among each other about the topic of the seminar. Librarians in the Collection Management division were also offered opportunities to contribute to the seminars through providing subject-specific electronic resources in the "External Links" area of each freshman seminar course site. AT is partnering with the WCAS Office of Studies to evaluate students' responses to the early contact enabled through the Blackboard course sites. The summer project has already led to considerably wider use of Blackboard among WCAS faculty who heard about the service through the freshman seminar initiative. For more information, please contact blackboard@northwestern.edu or click on the link below.