Pandæmonium

ECAR has released a study, Students and Information Technology, 2005: Convenience, Connection, Control, and Learning, and while I think they use too many commas in their study title, the Key Findings and Roadmap provide good overviews of the study.

Among the more interesting findings in the study is that “most students prefer a moderate amount of technology in their courses.” The age breakdown for this preference is a bit interesting:

Surprisingly, the youngest students in the study (18- to 19-year olds) have the least preference for IT in courses (mean of 2.86 where 1 represents courses with no IT and 5 represents courses that use IT exclusively). The 30-39 age group has the strongest preference for the use of IT in courses (mean of 3.25). Seniors have a greater preference for IT in their courses than do freshman. (Roadmap, pages 2-3)

The other big takeaway from the study is that everybody loves course management systems. Well, 75%, which is close to everybody. What do students like most about CMS?

• Tracking of grades on assignments and tests, and accessing sample exams and quizes.
• Course administration – accessing course syllabi, turning in assignments online, getting assignments back from instructors, accessing online readings, and taking exams online. (Roadmap, page 3)

I guess I'm surprised at the way the study broke those two items down. It seems to read that students like CMS for 1) grades and 2) all the other features that a CMS might contain. But it is good to see these kinds of results in the survey.

We've been experiencing exponential use of Blackboard at Richmond this semester, with each week generating new highs in page view activity. We're experiencing almost twice as many page views this semester as we were in the spring. So somebody is enjoying something about CMS.

Blackboard's Application Pack 3 for Blackboard 6 has several new features that might make our faculty happy. Some of those new question types might resolve wishes that our faculty discussed in this week's PETE lunch. Con Beausang was wishing for a fill-in-the-blank response that could be evaluated within a mathematical range. From the feature list I saw recently, this may be in AP3.

Another interesting feature is adaptive release. The idea is that students are directed to content based on their answers in assessments. Get an answer wrong? Adaptive release will put the resource in your hands to help you understand the subject better.

Unfortunately, AP3 has problems. The discussion lists have had many posts about problems here and there, and Blackboard has just published a list of known issues in AP3 that will keep us from going to the version anytime soon.

Version 7.0 is coming someday. It sounds like beta tests are already under way. Some members of the discussion lists have seen screen shots they like. At this point, my guess is that we won't take advantage of the winter break here to upgrade to AP3, and unless 7.0 is out along with the first Service Pack, we won't try that either.

We'll stick with Application Pack 2, Service Pack 3 for the school year, and consider 7.x in Summer 2006. Stability is the best feature in Blackboard as far as our faculty are concerned, and it seems we're in a good place right now.

It's the first day of classes at Richmond. This blog and our new social software server aren't yet in production, but I thought I'd take a moment to say hello. Our new blog is blojsom, a Java-based version of bloxsom. Nice features to explore in the coming days.

The lead-up to the semester has been fairly smooth. With classes starting in just a few hours, we've got almost as many Blackboard courses requested for the term now as we had by the end of the semester last fall. We crossed the 400 courses milestone just last night. Hopefully more faculty are putting more courses into Blackboard. It's a great way to store your syllabus and communicate with your students.

Our course request and enrollment application has done a great job over the summer. Faculty seem to be using it with ease. Phone calls are down in quantity and up in quality. I think everyone in the group has more time to sit down with faculty to show them how Blackboard works. A year ago we would all be busy creating courses and copying content, but faculty can do all this easily now.