The Office of Information Technology will be gradually implementing changes in Blackboard Learn, the learning management system used by the University, in order to make it simpler to use, Associate Chief Information Officer and Director of Academic Technology Services Serge Goldstein said.
These changes will be implemented over the next two years.
Goldstein explained that the changes will be implemented in two phases — the first phase includes uploading the Blackboard system, which has been running at the University server, to the cloud, and the second phase includes implementing new features of the Blackboard system, including a new user interface.
Some of the new features of Blackboard include reduced menus, streamlined presentation of the interfaceand Gradebook, a new grading tool.
Director of the McGraw Center and Associate Dean of the College LisaHerschbach explained that the new system will also allow for easy upload of student-created content and can be used to create open online courses and blend them with on-campus courses.
One key change is that the new interface will make the functions previously hidden under complicated menus visible by creating icons.
“The number of clicks is enormously reduced,” Goldstein explained. “You don’t have to click on something to go to something that you click on to go to something to go to something … and you’re twelve levels deep before you can finally do what you want to do. When you want to do something, you can do it right then and there.”
Goldstein said that OIT will start rolling out parts of the new user interfaceas early as fall 2015. He noted that the exact timeline and the details of the project have not been fully decided yet, as OIT is still weighing different options on how gradual the change should be.
At the end of the two-year trial period, OIT will decide whether it will continue using Blackboard or switch to another learning management system, Goldstein explained. If OIT decides to switch to another system, implementing it would take another year.
The team is planning to form a student focus group as early as spring 2015 and receive feedback, Herschbach said.
“The student experience should be driving a lot of the decisions,” Herschbach said.
Goldstein explained that the primary reason for the renovation is the outdated user interface of the former Blackboard system, about which many students and faculty were discontent because it was old and difficult to navigate.
“It’s not even web 1.0,” he said. “It’s like web negative 1.0.”
Goldstein added that after he and his colleagues decided that the current Blackboard system was too outdated, he and a group of representatives from other schools that use Blackboard met with Blackboard senior leadership and heard from the company that it had a brand-new user interfaceready for the market.
He noted that OIT has been constantly providing feedback to Blackboard and has participated in multiple focus groups to improve the system over many years.
Goldstein explained that the University has used Blackboard so long that it has become heavily integrated into the University’s academic infrastructure and therefore chose to implement a new Blackboard system rather than switch to a newlearning management system.
“The students know it, the faculty know it, and the Blackboard is very tightly integrated with lots of other systems on campus — the library’s e-reserve system, the digitalized film service, the course book list project,” he said.
Goldstein added that the goal of the renovation is to provide students with a better learning experience.
“Blackboard is the second busiest system in terms of data and the amount of users, second only to [University] email,” he said. “It is impacting students’ life on a day-to-day basis enormously. In that sense, we think it’s key to their success and their experience.”
Herschbach said the Blackboard renovation is in accordance with a general focus on accessibility and integration throughout University systems. The Office of Career Services launched its new website, HireTigers, in September, and the Office of the Registrar’s former student portal SCORE was replaced with TigerHub in November.
Students generally expressed positive opinions regarding the Blackboard renovation.
“I liked the simplicity of TigerHub. I think I’ll like the new Blackboard too,”Poupae Sinsub ’17 said.
Sinsub added she is excited that the University is trying to make its systems easier to navigate.
“Anything that contributes to the efficiency of Blackboard, in my opinion, is an improvement,” David Ting ’17 said.
Blackboard Learn is a learning management system offered by Blackboard Inc., an education software developer based in Washington, D.C.
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