what your users use: detailed insight for successful blackboard deployment made possible by eesysoft
Post on 13-Sep-2014
168 views
DESCRIPTION
WHAT YOUR USERS USE: DETAILED INSIGHT FOR SUCCESSFUL BLACKBOARD DEPLOYMENT MADE POSSIBLE BY EESYSOFT Jeroen Ten Haaf, Maastricht University To know which e-learning tools are used (and why) by teachers and students is crucial when it comes to strategic, educational, and support choices. Thus Blackboard offer the “statistics report” option for the individual teacher to get insight in the his student’s behaviour. Our admins create reports e.g. on total number of visits to the Blackboard application or to unique courses per day. In addition to these valuable data, Eesysoft helps us to understand how our Blackboard application is being used by teachers and students and supporting them subsequently. Eesysoft Analytics provides - realtime - detailed, yet easy to create reports on e.g.the different departments use of all the Blackboard functionalities. Also, we can compare the use of functionalities between different courses. Thus Eesysoft provides strategic information (benchmarking), shows us where problems occur, and may be of help in finding a relationship between the valuation of a course by the students involved and the use of tools / materials by the teacher. In addition to this, using Eesysoft Messaging, we are transforming our Blackboard support blog into a “in-context help platform”, providing specific information just in time, just in place to the end-user. During the presentation we will demonstrate the practical use of Eesysoft and discuss the added value of the product for the Maastricht University Blackboard community.TRANSCRIPT
What your users use: detailed
insight made possible by Eesysoft
Jeroen ten Haaf PhDBlackboard CoordinatorE-learning Project ManagerMaastricht University
ABOUT JEROEN
Jeroen ten Haaf PhDBlackboard CoordinatorE-learning Project ManagerMaastricht [email protected]
I have used Blackboard for 9 years
This Sunday I will swap from Blackboard courses to golf courses
• Founded 1974: 6 faculties (including academic hospital), rank #6 in top of young universities worldwide
• 16.000 students, 2500 teaching staff• Problem Based Learning (PBL) paradigm,
adopted from MacMaster (Canada)
Maastricht University
FUNCTIONAL SUPPORT
AntoinetteVesseur
DannyEijpe
Maartenvan Wesel
APPLICATION SUPPORT
HansMaessen
IvoKruchten
NoëlJaminon
TECHNICAL SUPPORT
MarcoGorissen
RezyDiederen
4/1/2
013
4/18/2
013
5/5/2
013
5/22/2
013
6/8/2
013
6/25/2
013
7/12/2
013
7/29/2
013
8/15/2
013
9/1/2
013
9/18/2
013
10/5/2
013
10/22/2
013
11/8/2
013
11/25/2
013
12/12/2
013
12/29/2
013
1/15/2
014
2/1/2
014
2/18/2
014
3/7/2
014
3/24/2
014
4/10/2
0140
5,000
10,000
15,000
20,000
25,000
Logins / day
4/1/2
013
4/18/2
013
5/5/2
013
5/22/2
013
6/8/2
013
6/25/2
013
7/12/2
013
7/29/2
013
8/15/2
013
9/1/2
013
9/18/2
013
10/5/2
013
10/22/2
013
11/8/2
013
11/25/2
013
12/12/2
013
12/29/2
013
1/15/2
014
2/1/2
014
2/18/2
014
3/7/2
014
3/24/2
014
4/10/2
0140
1,000
2,000
3,000
4,000
5,000
6,000
Unique course visits
4/1/2
013
4/15/2
013
4/29/2
013
5/13/2
013
5/27/2
013
6/10/2
013
6/24/2
013
7/8/2
013
7/22/2
013
8/5/2
013
8/19/2
013
9/2/2
013
9/16/2
013
9/30/2
013
10/14/2
013
10/28/2
013
11/11/2
013
11/25/2
013
12/9/2
013
12/23/2
013
1/6/2
014
1/20/2
014
2/3/2
014
2/17/2
014
3/3/2
014
3/17/2
014
3/31/2
014
4/14/2
0140
200,000
400,000
600,000
800,000
1,000,000
1,200,000
Hits / day
Safe Assign submission / year
Problem Based Learning (PBL), from the start 1974
• Courses (6 – 8 weeks) 50 – 400 students; divided in small groups: 15 stu dents work together on a practical or academic problem (case)
• Because cases are about real life, learning activities and experience are multidisciplinary in character
• Close contact between students and staff: interaction, collaboration, report meetings (twice a week obligatory), projects, occasions
• Self-study (preparing for the next group meeting, writing a paper, completing an assignment, etc.)
• Student-centered approach: teachers are there to help students along, but students are in charge of their own learning process:
• Students find out and develop their favorite learning style(s) <
Maastricht University
1. Intrinsic driver: need of support improvement / management reports
• Use of Blackboard in general user-data BB database
• Use of tools in different faculties, courses ??
• Technology Adoption: which teachers make use (and which not) of certain functionalities and why ??
• Context support, context notifications ??
• Student performance (students) BB analytics, retention center
2. Extrinsic: critical attitude towards VLE at UM: project “VLE in future perspective”
• Student interviews & inquiries ?
• Teacher interviews ?
• Management opinions ?
STARTING POINT
Inventory• Student interviews & inquiries
• “Teachers have no or very poor IT-skills”
• “Most courses are a mess, we want uniform basic structure”
• “Blackboard is indispensible”…
• Teacher interviews
• “I don’t know which tools are available for my scenarios”
• “If I know there is a tool, I don’t know how to use it”
• “Blackboard is indispensible”…
• Management opinions
• “My teachers don’t use Blackboard”
• High costs: “how much and how is this thing used?”
WHAT WE DID I
Method• Eesysoft Analytics• Eesysoft Messaging
• http://support.eesysoft.com/index.jsp
WHAT WE DID II
Tracks user activity on an individual user level. The standard configuration of the building block provides the following user information:User IDusernameemailfullnameInstitutionRole (primary / secondary)DepartementCity, CountryRolesLocale/language
With individual customers list can be restricted / extended
EESY ANALYTICS
• Logins: each time a user logs in (time/date stamp, user ID)
• Number of active users: by monitoring individual user logins, information is provided about the number of active users during a specific period
• Session time
• User Activity: Each activity a user performs is monitored. This could be navigating to a specific page (‘page refresh’) and/or clicking in/on a specific field, button, link
• This means EesyAnalytics understands WHO is active WHERE and WHEN
• Eesysoft does NOT monitor WHAT the content is of an interaction <
EESY ANALYTICS
Reports: see http://unimaas.eesysoft.nl
Discussion threads
Safe assign submissions <
EESY ANALYTICS
FASoS SBE FPN FdR ICIS UCM MGSoG FHS DKE CES FHML TA MSC0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
45
50
Use of discussionboard
Perc
enta
ge o
f acti
ve st
uden
ts
FASoS SBE FPN FdR ICIS UCM MGSoG FHS DKE CES FHML TA MSC0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
Safe Assignment submisions
Perc
enta
ge o
f acti
ve st
uden
ts
• General system messages: Blackboard portal login page
1. Specific message for a small group of users only if they perform a specific action?
2. We have tons of information how to use Blackboard tools
• Blackboard manuals• Own support blog• Information from elsewhere..• … But how do we get the right and specific information
(and nothing else) to the user at the moment she/he is in need for it?
EESY MESSAGING
• Specific message for a small group of users only if they perform a specific action:Due to our customised course content creation procedure, teachers should not select Course Settings during course copy…
• > eleum.unimaas.nl > ja.tenhaaf > example course
EESY MESSAGING
• General system messages: Blackboard portal login page• Specific message for a small group of users only if they
perform a specific action?• We have tons of information how to use Blackboard tools
• Blackboard manuals• Own support blog• Information from elsewhere..
• … But how do we get the right and specific information (and nothing else) to the user at the moment she/he is in need for it?
EESY MESSAGING
• how do we get the right and specific information (and nothing else) to the user at the moment she/he is in need for it?
• > eleumaccept.unimaas.nl > ja.tenhaaf > global perspectives >
EESY MESSAGING
SOME CONCLUSIONS
1. Faculty are not sheep. They are a highly diverse group, ill suited to one-size-fits-all instruction. By using Eesysoft (analytics as well as messaging) we are able now to identify client needs and to offer efficient custom support
2. From tool-centered support to client centered support
3. Issue related, specific information dissemination (specific messaging)
4. University Board and Faculty Deans are very satisfied with true data,
1. Support or falsify opinions, bringing nuances
5. Acceptance for Improvement program VLE1. Blackboard back to basics
2. Customised specialties
FUTURE PLANS
1. Integral activity monitoring
2. Filter on departments (faculties), courses, subgroups (high – medium – low activity), individuals
3. Scenario driven
4. Adoption of techniques by teaching staff
5. Context support for all users
THANK YOU!
Jeroen ten Haaf PhDBlackboard CoordinatorE-learning Project ManagerMaastricht [email protected]