Help Wanted

ATUS is considering moving to Blackboard Version 8.0 for the coming fall quarter. We welcome any assistance with evaluating this new version and/or any feedback you have on our decision to upgrade. If you are interested in participating, please contact John Farquhar via email or phone 650-6538.

ATUS is currently in the process of evaluating Blackboard's newest release, Version 8.0. This release includes some major changes to the user interface, most significantly the Gradebook, which has been renamed to the "Grade Center".

Almost entirely redesigned, the Grade Center exhibits new capabilities and vast improvements over the previous Gradebook. Some of the new features or improvements include the following:

• a redesigned tool bar, titled the Action Bar, through which multple functions are possible
• the ability to create and print Reports, such as final grades, to hand out to students or other interested parties
• inline editing, the ability to enter grades directly through the Grade Center spreadsheet
• new grade calculations, Average grade and Minimum/Maximum grade, and improvements to the creation of Weighted grades and Total points grade
• Smart Views, the ability to categorize students into groupings based on selected criteria. These views can be displayed in the Grade Center
• a multitude of ways to customize the display of the Grade Center
• the ability to create Grading Schema: multiple grading scales that match Assessment grades to chosen grade displays, such as text or percent grades

Safe Assign

Version 8.0 also includes the SafeAssign plagiarism checking tool which ATUS has been evaluating for the last several months. The version of the SafeAssign tool has been changed and several enhancements have been added:

• SafeAssign will integrate with the grading center.
• A new tab is added which displays the SafeAssignments created for the course and their corresponding information.
• Overall performance is enhanced.
• Time to generate reports is reduced.

Self and Peer Assessment

Another new feature to Blackboard 8.0 is the new Self and Peer Assessment Building Block, a comprehensive and flexible tool for the self and peer assessment of text, images, and digital-based resources within Blackboard Learning System. It allows an instructor to create an exercise with a list of questions for the assessor. These questions can have a variety of grading or marking criteria, created or selected by the instructor, to be used in the assessment.

The instructor then distributes the exercise with the questions and criteria to the students. The instructor can choose to have the student assess his or her own work or the works of other students. In turn, the students submit the work to be viewed by the instructor. The instructor can monitor the progress of the assessment, download the assessment submission and results, and add the assessment marking to the Grade Center.

Social Bookmarking

"Blackboard Scholar," a social bookmarking service customized for education, has also been integrated with the Blackboard 8.0 Learning system. Social bookmarking is an activity performed over a computer network that allows users to save and categorize a personal collection of bookmarks — stored or retrievable web pages — and share them with others. It provides a new way for students and instructors to find educational resources on the Web for courses and research. Furthermore, by storing and sharing associated information with each resource through tags and disciplines, Scholar allows users to evaluate the resources and find the most relevant and reliable.

Training Offered

ATUS will be offering workshops which deal specifically with the changes and new features in the summer and into the fall quarter. Workshop registration can be found at http://west.wwu.edu/training.

About the author
Peter Agras, ATUS Instructional Designer, assists faculty members in design and delivery of courses which are delivered both in the classroom and on the internet. Peter offers training in Blackboard and other related programs on a weekly basis. Contact him via email, or phone 650-4159.

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