Interaction has been shown to be a core component of engaging online learning experiences and catalyst for developing and sustaining online learning communities. Blackboard offers a number of communication tools that faculty can utilize to foster interaction in the learning environment.
Whereas synchronous interactions take place in real-time, asynchronous interactions span geographic and temporal constraints, allowing individuals the opportunity to reflect and form more coherent communications.
Synchronous Communication |
Asynchronous Communication |
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The Blackboard e-mail tool is designed to help faculty communicate with students, fellow staff members and TA’s. The this tool allows faculty to send e-mails to the official NIU email addresses of select students, TA’s or entire class. It is not necessary for the faculty member to know the email address of the individual receiving the email. A copy of each message sent from Blackboard is automatically also delivered to the sender's email account. More details...
The discussion tools provided by Blackboard can enrich communication in the web-enhanced traditional classroom as well as in the online venue. These tools provide faculty with a wealth of opportunities for building course communities, encouraging academic discussion outside the classroom and collecting assignments electronically.
Asynchronous discussion resembles an electronic bulletin board, where users post their messages when they have time. Other users enter the discussion according to their own schedules. In an asynchronous discussion board, a forum is a general topic for discussion. A thread is subordinate discussion within the forum. More details...
The Assignment Manager in Blackboard enables users with the role of instructor or TA in Blackboard to create Assignments in any content areas and post them for Students to complete. Creating an assignment automatically creates an item in the Gradebook which holds all the submitted student assignments. Faculty members can retrieve students files, comment on them, and return them to the student all through the Gradebook. More details...
The Digital Drop Box is a virtual storage within the Blackboard course for students and also allows them to also send files to the faculty member. More details...
A podcast offers a way for individuals to selectively subscribe to audio or video content over the Internet. Subscribing to a podcast is free as the term “subscription” refers to signing-up for new episodes rather than paying for content. The content that an individual subscribes to can then be automatically downloaded for viewing on a computer or a mobile device. Notification of new content is automatic, as the subscriber need not manually revisit a specific Web site to download new content.
In conjunction with the upgrade to Blackboard version 7.1, NIU has installed a building block to Blackboard that now allows faculty to easily create a course podcast in Blackboard. More details...
An increasing number of online media services allow for embedding of media into other Web sites. Blackboard supports such embed code from many popular online media services, such as: YouTube, Google Video, and Google Maps. Many embeddable media sources can be embedded in the HTML code view when adding an item to Blackboard.
Wimba Voice is one component of the full Wimba Collaboration Suite that integrates with Blackboard and provides the ability to add audio to any number of items and activities in Blackboard. Voice discussion boards, voice email, and voice presentations are among the various components of Wimba Voice that can be used to enrich other text-only communications.
NIU is arranging a six month, campus-wide trial license for unlimited usage of the Wimba Voice for all NIU Blackboard courses and communities. More details will be provided here once available.
Wimba Classroom is an online collaboration tool that integrates with Blackboard and allows educators and students to engage in meaningful and memorable interactions by combining interactive technologies with instructional best practices.
NIU has arranged a six month, campus-wide trial license for unlimited usage of the Wimba Classroom online collaboration tool available for all NIU Blackboard courses and communities. During the Spring and Summer 2008 semesters, any interested NIU faculty/staff, graduate teaching assistants, and leaders of Blackboard communities are encouraged to try using the Wimba Classroom tool with their Blackboard course section(s) and/or Blackboard communities and provide feedback regarding the utility of such a communication tool in enhancing the quality of the learning experiences for students. More details...
The Virtual Classroom is the built-in synchronous communication tool in Blackboard including text chat and virtual whiteboard, and breakout session capabilities. The tool however does not support audio or video communications. More details...
The Lightweight Chat tool is similar in many ways to the Virtual Classroom but does not include the following tools: Course Map, Whiteboard, Ask Question, & Breakout Sessions. More details...
Social bookmarking is very simply a Web-based approach to cataloguing favorite online resources. The "social" element denotes the ability of the user to share select bookmarked resources with others. Click here to view a 3-minute introduction to social bookmarking.
While numerous social bookmarking tools, such as del.icio.us and CiteULike, can be leveraged for academic contexts, Blackboard's Scholar social bookmarking tool is integrated within the Blackboard environment and offers some powerful features for faculty seeking to create opportunities for students to collect, review, and share academic resources. More details...
The following sources offer further information concerning fostering interaction in online learning environments.
Anderson, T. (2006). Interaction in learning and teaching on the Educational Semantic Web. In C. Juwah (Ed.), Interactions in online education: Implications for theory and practice (pp. 141-155). New York: Routledge.
Bender, T. (2003). Discussion-based online teaching to enhance student learning: Theory, practice and assessment. Sterling, VA: Stylus.
Foster Herron, J., & Wright, V. H. (2006). Assessment in online learning: Are students really learning? In V. H. Wright, C. Szymanski Sunal & E. K. Wilson (Eds.), Research on enhancing the interactivity of online learning (pp. 45-64). Greenwich, CT: Information Age.
Garrison, D. R., & Anderson, T. (2003). E-learning in the 21st century: A framework for research and practice. New York: RoutledgeFalmer.
McVay Lynch, M. (2002). The online educator: A guide to creating the virtual classroom. New York: RoutledgeFalmer.
Palloff, R. M., & Pratt, K. (1999). Building learning communities in cyberspace: Effective strategies for the online classroom. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Palloff, R. M., & Pratt, K. (2001). Lessons from the cyberspace classroom: The realities of online teaching. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Palloff, R. M., & Pratt, K. (2002). Beyond the looking glass: What faculty and students need to be successful online. In K. E. Rudestam & J. Schoenholtz-Read (Eds.), Handbook of online learning: Innovations in higher education and coporate training. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Palloff, R. M., & Pratt, K. (2003). The virtual student: A profile and guide to working with online learners. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Palloff, R. M., & Pratt, K. (2005). Collaborating online: Learning together in community. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Salmon, G. (2003). E-moderating: The key to teaching and learning online. London: RoutledgeFalmer.
Swan, K., & Shea, P. (2005). The development of virtual learning communities. In S. R. Hiltz & R. Goldman (Eds.), Learning together online: Research on asynchronous learning networks. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Last Updated: 3/21/2008