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Now Soaring in Use by Professors and Students,
"Blackboard" System "Extends the Classroom"
Susan Simon, Jeff Bohrer, and Mark O'Neil consult with faculty and staff
on the use of Blackboard at Dartmouth.
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After growing slowly for its first three years on the
Dartmouth Web site, campus-wide use of the Blackboard course-management system
is now expanding quickly. Last fall, Dartmouth professors were using the system
to support 160 courses, or almost half of the College curriculum. That compares
to 75 courses on Blackboard in autumn 2002.
"The Blackboard site is really an extension of the classroom for
me," says Lee A. Witters, M.D., professor of biological sciences at the
College, and Eugene W. Leonard, Professor of Medicine and Biochemistry at the
Dartmouth Medical School. "In my fall course, Biology 2: Human Biology,
where I had 210 students, there were nearly 100,000 hits on the site during the
term."
Every Dartmouth course has a Blackboard site that its professor can
activate. On the site can be posted course-related information, assignments,
and documents, for easy access and downloading by students enrolled in that
course, and for others by permission. The system also enables online course
discussions; and Blackboard is easy to use, with a consistent interface.
"It provides a way for a faculty member to run a course Web site
without needing to know any html," says Malcolm Brown, Dartmouth's
director of academic computing. "Once you learn the ropes, you don't have
to relearn; it's the same thing over and over again." Computing Services
will also custom-build a course site for a professor who desires one, he
adds.
Around the country, course management systems "have sprung up
overnight," Brown observes. Four years ago, Dartmouth began offering
software called Blackboard CourseInfo. Now referred to as Blackboard, it has
grown into a much more powerful system, with dynamic links to other campus
databases. For example, Blackboard keeps itself up to date on course
enrollments: any student in a class with an active link can access its
postings, and any professor can call up a current list of students in a
specific course, with a photo roster.
"That's been really important to the faculty — it helps them get to
know their students," says Brown.
Professor Witters notes that Blackboard "allows postings of readings
and PowerPoint slides that the students would otherwise have no access
to, allowing them to 'digest' these at their own pace. I use the Discussion
Board heavily, where students can post questions that I or my teaching
assistants can answer for all to see. Students can also post interesting items
that they run across ... I have also used the assessment format to post online
quizzes, and even to have students grade each other on class
presentations."
Blackboard's Discussion Board, in particular, "really makes for a
community of learning," reflects Professor Witters, who is also using the
system in his Dartmouth Medical School classes.
"Students are increasingly turning to this technology to advance their
learning," he concludes.
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