Neil CocklinOver the coming months Blackboard will be continuing the Blackboard Innovative Teaching Series (BITS). These are a series of webinars aimed at disseminating best practice, strategies and pedagogy for educators using Blackboard.
This series has been running for several years and recordings of past webinars can be viewed online.
Upcoming events for 2013 are listed below:
- The Online Collaborative Experience – Monday 7th October 2013, 4pm GMT
The webinar will discuss the online collaborative tools (discussion boards, wikis, blogs, and Collaborate) available in Blackboard and demonstrate how we used them in a three-week online course professional development for faculty.
Learn More & Register - Accessibility Matters! Part 2 – Thursday 17th October 2013, 4pm GMT
Come and learn why thinking about accessibility in your class matters. Even if you do not currently have students requiring particular accommodations, knowing where to go for help on campus and how to make sure your course content is doing the right things for all your students can help you ensure that you’re never caught off guard. We’ll talk about best practices and demonstrate a couple simple things you can do in Blackboard Learn to help you ensure all your students can be successful in their learning regardless of their physical or cognitive ability.
Learn More & Register - Incorporating Gamification into Your Curriculum – Monday 21st October 2013, 6pm GMT
The use of digital games and game mechanics to further education has received growing attention and respect in the last several years. There is strong evidence that thoughtful employment of gaming elements can improve motivation and understanding. This presentation provides a background on the topics of game-based learning, gamification, and serious games. It underscores some easy-to-use tools to facilitate gamification, as well as practical impressions and results from a freshman-level programming course. This presentation will also highlight the Achievements tool in Blackboard Learn. The Achievements tool allows instructors and course designers to designate criteria for issuing rewards to students in the form of both Badges and Certificates.
Learn More & Register - Supporting the Seven Principles with Blackboard Learn – Monday 4th November 2013, 6pm GMT
In this session, you will explore how the Seven Principles of Good Practice in Undergraduate Education (Chickering and Gamson, 1991) can be supported using the features of the Blackboard Learn. Practical implementation examples will be shown to showcase effective pedagogy and instructional options related to course structure, navigation, activities, assignments, and communication. Attendees will be granted access to our illustrative and resource-rich course site specifically designed to support this presentation with hand-on activities, discussion forums, downloadable materials, and additional resources.
Learn More & Register - A Systematic Approach to Creating Accessible Video Content for Online Courses – Thursday 14th November 2013, 4pm GMT
Are you interested in adding video content to your online courses, but concerned about the development time to ensure that your content meets accessibility guidelines? This webinar will show instructors a systematic approach for scripting, recording, and publishing video content on YouTube that makes it easy to embed video content in Blackboard complete with close-captioning and video transcripts.
Learn More & Register - Strategies for Providing Feedback to Students – Monday 18th November 2013, 6pm GMT
Meaningful feedback is a critical element in the learning cycle that needs to be done frequently and consistently to ensure learning outcomes are achieved by all students. Given there are only 24 hours in a day and not one minute more, how can instructors provide frequent, meaningful feedback to learners in a manner that is easily consumed and put into practice? Attend this seminar to learn new techniques to provide feedback to students, missed opportunities to provide feedback, strategies to provide feedback that will be implemented by students, and what type of feedback students desire.
Learn More & Register - Blackboard in the Flipped Classroom – Monday 9th December 2013, 6pm GMT
This presentation elaborates methods for using Blackboard in conjunction with a flipped strategy to deliver instructional materials online, reserving face-to-face classroom time for hands-on practice and application. Students in flipped classrooms theoretically get more time applying concepts under the guidance of an expert instructor. We will discuss Blackboard tools, flipped-model guiding principles, and instructional strategies for implementing a world-class, pedagogically-designed, flipped model of instruction using a combination of video and interactive web applications within a Blackboard course shell.
Learn More & Register