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Showing posts from September, 2013

Back to School, Blackboard and All

Back to school means back to Blackboard. My frustration with most learning management system (LMS) platforms is well known. The administration of a class, depending on your institution, is often left to the instructor. This includes layout and design choices that I have long believed should be standardized, at least minimally, at the institution level. Because instructors can do everything from the "massive single page" dump of materials to atomized folders by week or topic, students end up trying to relearn navigation of the system with each new course. I'm now teaching at a top university with the best Blackboard install I've used. It still has problems, of course, but it is much better than any previous version and installation I've used. I theorize that part of this is streamlining the tool choices and layout options. Requiring few choices of the instructor lets me focus on the course, not the website. There might be a model shell at the university, b