Student-centered ungraded activities in Bb

We want students to succeed in our classes, right? I’m pretty sure that’s right! So why do so many of us resist seeing our courses from the student’s perspective?

Many faculty, especially those new, since the height of the pandemic, to teaching online don’t consider the work that the LMS can do to help keep students on track. Not for lack of wanting students to succeed—but because it’s unclear how the LMS can help, other than as a repository for PowerPoint and syllabus, and as a tool for sending announcements to the class. And maybe for keeping attendance and grades up to date.

Am I right?

I thought so. I’ve used Canvas for almost 17 years, and now I’ve returned to Blackboard at my current institution. Blackboard is an interesting case in the LMS world, because—like some open source platforms—it allows a lot of functionality. But, making that functionality work is another story entirely. Often, we have to click through screen after screen after screen to find the box that needs to be checked, and many faculty just aren’t interested in doing that. Granted, we should be using a more user-friendly LMS, to make it easier for faculty to help students, but we’re not. So, how do we deal with it?

Making Blackboard’s functionality work is another story entirely.

What do we want for students?

Here’s a short list, from my perspective—feel free to add to it in the comments. We want:

1. To minimize the general levels of complexity and confusion for students, including the number of clicks to get to things.
2. Students to see everything that’s due in their to-do list and activity stream (and make it possible for it to show up in their calendar, while we’re at it).
3. Everything that’s necessary to show up in our gradebook.
4. Students to see their progress in the course.
5. To make content re-usable for future iterations.

Canvas is helpful in this regard, because it allows faculty to turn anything into an “event” that has a due date or a date associated with it. This means it shows up in the generated syllabus and the course calendar.  You can add a date to a class meeting or an ungraded reading assignment, even the date by which part of another graded activity is due. See my blog post on doing this in Canvas here.

But how do you do this in Blackboard?

It’s not the easiest thing in the world, that’s for sure.

Let’s take the case of an  ungraded introduction. It’s the beginning of the term, and you want your students to use Flip to record a quick video self-introduction to build community in the class. You don’t want to grade this, other than—maybe—complete or incomplete. If you don’t grade it, it won’t turn up in your gradebook—and if there’s no date associated with its submission deadline, students won’t see it turn up in their to-do list. What’s a teacher to do?

First, note that in Blackboard, the “task” item is very different from a “to-do” item. I first thought tasks would be a good route to explore, but they’re not. I’ll do another post on this if folks are interested.

I experimented with a few possibilities to respond to this situation, and two options are pretty good—you might choose one or the other based on teaching style and level of course.

Option 1: Broken down into individual parts, with a text feedback H5P embed

Option 2: One big Blackboard survey, with a Likert scale response question

Option 1

This option is good for students who may be working in small spurts of time, or for younger students who don’t have a healthy attention span yet and need a bit more direction and structure from you. Here’s how I’d do it:

1. Create an item asking students to familiarize themselves with Flip. Embed a video, and provide links, and ask students to join the group Flip with the code. This then makes the second step easy.
2. Create an item embedding the Flip board. Ask students to record a quick video introducing themselves, touching on year, major, what they’re excited about, and something unique or interesting about themselves. (You know the drill—adapt as you like!). This too is ungraded.
3. Create a graded assignment with a due date using the LTI connection to a simple text-based (“essay”) H5P embed. This can be 1 point, or 10. I would use a 3-line “essay” interactive, asking students to say something brief about their experience with my instructions for Flip, or with the video itself. Any submission gets the points, and it’s embedded right in the Blackboard item—so it’s easy to do, no extra clicking. The title to this assignment is “Your experience using Flip as a class introduction” or something, so it’s clear to students.
4. Test it out as a preview user, and make corrections before it goes live.

Option 2

This option is good for students who have healthier attention spans and may be able to sit down and work through the three parts of Option 1 at a single pass. For instance, seniors or grad students. This is also a good option if your institution doesn’t have H5P. Here’s how:

1. Create a survey in Blackboard. It should have a due date. In the description and introduction spaces, include information from #1 and #2 above—familiarize yourself with Flip, join the group, and create an intro video.
2. Create a Likert scale survey question to the question: “How easy were these instructions for you to follow?” or “How easy was it to complete this introduction using Flip?”
3. Test it out as a preview user, and make corrections before it goes live.

Why do it this way?

Both of these options have a value added in addition to ensuring that the activity is visible, via its due date, to students in both their to-do lists and activity streams: The surveys ask students to think about their engagement with the activity, developing both metacognitive skills of a sort and providing you with real-time feedback on your course design.

Surveys ask students to think about their engagement with the activity, developing both metacognitive skills and providing you with real-time feedback.

Students are assessed, functionally, on their feedback, rather than the video itself. And, bonus: We all know how infrequently students respond, especially in online courses, to their end-of-term surveys, so why not sprinkle it throughout the course? With this exercise, maybe your students will be more inclined, too, to complete the SET at the end of term.

Happy days!