Blackboard Collaborate can now be accessed from your mobile device. Simply download the free App from iTunes.

The App allows you and your students to participate in a scheduled Blackboard Collaborate sessionusing your iPhone, iPod or iPad. Although it isn’t as powerful as the web version of Blackboard Collaborate, it still provides access to the most commonly used functions.

Participants can use the mobile App to:

• Listen and talk to participants and moderators
• Interact with the session via the text chat
• View whiteboard content and shared applications
• Raise their hands, respond to polls, or participate in breakout rooms.

How do I connect?

There are two main ways to join a Collaborate session.

• Through your Blackboard unit using the Blackboard mobile App
• Through your Blackboard unit using a web browser (e.g. Safari)

Simply click on the active session link and the BB Collaborate mobile App will automatically open, connecting you to the session.

Want to see it in action?

If you are interested in seeing how the App works then sign up for a free short half hour workshop. Just remember to download the BB Collaborate Mobile app to your iPhone or iPad and bring it with you.

For more information on the application feel free to contact

David Spann
Virtual Classroom Coordinator | Curtin Teaching and Learning
Email | d.spann@curtin.edu.au
Web | LTS WebForm

Please note: If you are in CBS or Humanities talk to your faculty learning advisors for assistance in setting up the Grade Centre final export to Student One.

Backup the Grade Centre

Before your teaching team start entering the final exam grades en masse, take a snapshot of the grades entered to date and download a copy of all your results.

Taking regular snapshots of the Grade Centre is recommended, especially after each assessment point in the unit. Please remember to do this once the final grades have been entered at the end of semester as well, to ensure that you have a copy of the students’ results that you can view using Excel.

How to Backup the Grade Centre

To download a copy of your Grade Centre results, follow these steps:

1. Login to your Blackboard unit and ensure that Edit Mode is ON.
2. Go to the Control Panel > Grade Centre > Full Grade Centre > Work Offline > Download.

Follow the instructions shown on the screen to download a CSV file to your computer where you can store it as a backup of the Grade Centre at that time and view it in Microsoft Excel if you need to refer to it.

Do you want your students to see their assessment score or final grade right now?

In the end of semester rush to mark exams, enter grades and finalise moderation, you may not want your students seeing any of the last minute changes and calculations that may occur. You can hide the grades until you are ready to release them all by hiding the relevant Grade Centre column. So when students view their My Grades area in the Blackboard unit, the column will not be visible.

How to hide your Grade Centre column/s from student view

There are two ways to hide a column within your Grade Centre from student view. Be aware that there is one potential trap that some academics fall into when attempting to hide a column from their students view.

The first way to hide a column from the students view is the easiest. However not all columns in Grade Centre will give you this option.

If the column information pull-down menu from the chevrons at the top right of the column gives you the option to Show/Hide to Users then consider selecting that option and clicking on it.

If successful the column should then show a grey circle with a diagonal red line, telling you that the students cannot currently see that column.

The second way to hide a column from student view is by following these steps:

1. Login to your Blackboard unit and ensure that Edit Mode is ON.
2. Go to the Control Panel > Grade Centre > Full Grade Centre.
3. Access the column that you wish to hide from your students and click on the chevron pull-down menu next to the column name to access the contextual menu. Select Edit Column Information.

   

4. On the next screen, in the section ‘Show this Column to Students’, select No and click Submit.

   

As before, your hidden column will now have a grey circle with a red diagonal line through it to indicate that the column is hidden from student view.

If you wish to Show a column to your students, simply follow the same process outlined above but where it says Show this Column to Students select Yes.  Ensure you check the top of the column in the grade centre to see that the grey circle with the red diagonal line through it is NOT showing.

Check your totals!

If you are using a total column to collate a number of different assessment points into a final total, it is wise to ‘run the numbers’ as a test student to make sure that it is adding up correctly. Sometimes, the total column may include assessment scores from a previous semester and this can upset your figures.

To check your Grade Centre calculations work correctly add yourself as a test student. To add yourself as a test student follow these steps:

1. Ensure that Edit Mode is ON.  Go to Control Panel > Course Tools > Add Test Student.
2. On the Modify Test Student Account screen, select ‘Enroll Test Student….. in Course’ to add the student test account to your unit. You will be prompted to set your own password when you create the test student account.

You can login to the student test account with your staff ID appended with ‘_s’.  For instance if your staff ID is ‘222222H’, your student test account login would be ‘222222H_s’.

Once you are a test student for your unit you can log into Blackboard using your test student details and see the the student view of the unit. You can check which assessment grades are visible in the My Grades view.

Logged in as a lecturer try entering some scores into each of your unit’s assessment points in the test student account that you have created (remember that the student will be called First Name Test, Last Name Student, in the Grade Centre view) and see if the total column updates and adds the numbers correctly.

If you find an error, select Edit Column Information from the pull-down menu in the chevron for that total column and check the calculations in there. You may have to modify which columns the total column is using to calculate the final score.

Keeping a ‘clean and tidy’ Grade Centre that works correctly in your unit can reduce the stress that both staff and students can feel around grades. If you would like more information about the functionality of Grade Centre, consider participating in a workshop, or look at these online resources.

Blackboard Online Help

Blackboard Video Tutorials

If you would like assistance with your Blackboard unit contact the LMS team via their web form at: http://cel.curtin.edu.au/global/contactus/lmssupport.cfm

Blackboard Collaborate is a live web conferencing and virtual classroom platform that allows staff and students to communicate using a real-time learning space. The main features include two-way audio, multipoint video, an interactive whiteboard, application sharing, web tour, polling and session recording.

You can conduct a range of online activities using Blackboard Collaborate including introductory or ice breaker exercises, brainstorming, problem sharing and solving, presentation of research and projects, oral presentations, role plays, debates, mentoring and support.

As the moderator of a Blackboard Collaborate session, you have the ability to upload PowerPoint slides to the Whiteboard and provide explanatory information just as you would in a face-to-face session. However, there are a number of additional tools that you can incorporate into your virtual lessons. You can:

• share and distribute files to your students in real time
• take your students on a web tour
• use the video conferencing facility to talk to the students via webcam
• conduct polls within the session and determine your students’ level of understanding
• share applications on your computer or the entire desktop
• assign your students to groups and allocate them breakout rooms for private discussion
• invite external participants or guest speakers into the session.

You can also record your Blackboard Collaborate sessions for those students who are unable to attend. An important advantage of a recorded session is that the interactivity of the session remains intact. For example, if the moderator shares a file with the class half way through the session, as students reach that point in the recording they will also be presented with the file, which they can download via the recording.

Some advantages of using Blackboard Collaborate

Utilising an online virtual classroom means that staff and students from any location can join in and participate with fellow students, academic staff and guests.

If you facilitate a class online, then as long as you have access to the Internet (and have a headset and microphone); you are not tied to your office on campus.  Need to attend an overseas conference or present a poster but can’t because of your timetable? Consider scheduling a Blackboard Collaborate session instead. Having problems sourcing a good venue for your tutorials? Perhaps Blackboard Collaborate would suit your needs.

The updated interface of Blackboard Collaborate (click thumbnail to view at full size)

What’s New in Blackboard Collaborate?

If you are already familiar with Elluminate Live!, here are the Top 5 things you need to know about the changes in Blackboard Collaborate.

Add Blackboard Collaborate to your Blackboard unit

To enable Blackboard Collaborate in your Blackboard unit, access the Blackboard Collaborate webpage for step by step instructions.

Blackboard Collaborate Sessions now available

If you are keen to start using Blackboard Collaborate, please book into a Blackboard Collaborate online session via our bookings page.

Alternatively, LTS staff will be available to assist you within Blackboard Collaborate every Thursday from 11am – 12noon. Simply drop into the Blackboard Collaborate session and ask questions related to Collaborate, Blackboard, Campus Pack or OLAS.

Want to try it out?

If you’d like to explore Blackboard Collaborate without having to enable it in your Blackboard unit, we have set up a practice area where you can login and investigate all the features of  the virtual classroom.

You can enter as a moderator and practice uploading your lecture notes and handouts, use the whiteboard area or share your applications. Alternatively, you can see what a student will experience by entering as a student.  Simply click on the relevant button below.

More information and help resources

If you need more assistance, you can also access a range of help resources online via Curtin Teaching and Learning Blackboard Collaborate.

What is a rubric?

A rubric is an assessment tool designed to outline the expectations for achievement.  It is usually explicitly designed to support as well as to evaluate student learning.

Development and use of rubrics operates across assessment design, communication, marking, analysis and feedback experience.

Interactive rubrics will help you:

• Increase Efficiency – Rubrics are built into the grading workflow and the click-and-score simplicity saves you time.
• Provide Consistent and Quality Feedback – Rubrics enable educators to provide consistent evaluation and contextual feedback to students.
• Promote 21st Century Skills – Rubrics make it easier to assign essay questions, individual and group assignments, blogs, wikis and discussion boards as assessment activities which foster critical thinking and collaboration.

http://deinfocus.blogspot.com/2011/08/whats-new-in-91interactive-rubrics.html?m=1

Student assessment activity

In the first instance, students read the required assessment activity and the assessment rubric to determine what they need to do and at what standard.  The assessment task provides the context for achievement.  [For more guidance on developing appropriate assessment tasks and marking guides refer to Chapter 9 in Teaching and Learning at Curtin [PDF – 766kb].]

The rubric will identify specific criteria, levels of achievement and descriptors thus allowing the student to better plan their approach to the task.  The increased transparency can have the effect of ensuring the student is able to work more independently and identify all expected evidence they will need to provide to successfully engage with the task.

Evaluating assessment submissions

Secondly, the rubric is used to help assessors focus on the expected standards and maintain a measure of consistency and objectivity.  In this phase too, where moderation of student work often occurs, it means that groups of assessors can test the consistency of their judgments against the criteria.  Rubrics are not about diminishing the on-balance professional judgment of the assessor, but rather a tool for explicitly articulating the elements to be assessed.

Feedback

Finally, the rubric provides a framework by which the student can reflect on their work and the assessor’s comments to review the strengths and deficiencies of the work.

What does a rubric look like?

Sample Rubric [click to enlarge in new window]

The rubric will generally have 5-10 rows like the one above.  Each row will focus on a specific assessment criterion and describe the required evidence at each level of achievement.  Descriptors are generally more qualitative than quantitative – especially for higher order outcomes – but may include specific quantitative details as discriminators.

Numerical values may vary despite students operating within the same achievement band.

While it is possible to generate very complicated and detailed lists of evidence that might allow a more granular distinction the reality is they will more than likely confuse everyone involved.  The different bands of achievement are intended to support an assessor’s professional judgment.

Interactive Rubrics in Blackboard 9.1

When Curtin upgraded to Blackboard 9.1 one of the new features that was enabled was the ability to use rubrics that directly integrate with the Assignment Manager and Grade Centre.

Interactive Rubric Screencapture [click to enlarge the image]

The tool allows the creation of reusable and shareable rubrics that operate directly within the Assignment Manager to allow assessors to evaluate work directly within the Blackboard environment.  The tool can streamline grading and allows assessors to automatically score the criteria and provide feedback in context.

More guidance on the use of Rubrics in Blackboard 9.1 can be located in Blackboard Help or Blackboard OnDemand.

More information

• Interactive Rubrics with Blackboard Learn SP6 – Blackboard.com
• Rubrics – The Teaching, Learning and Technology [TLT] Group
• Using Rubrics to Foster Learning-Centered Practices – Educause
• Links to Educational Resources about Rubrics– Indiana University
• Rubric Bank– Portland State University, Center for Academic Excellence
• Designing rubrics for assessing higher order thinking [Prince George’s Community College]

Related articles

• Using rubrics in assessment (annmic.wordpress.com)
• Grading Rubrics and Online Assignments (onlinecollege.org)
• Authentic Assessment in Higher Ed: Rubric Critique and Improvement Recommendations (psipsychologytutor.org)
• Blogging Rubric (evenfromhere.org)