For many students, the era of submitting typed papers is gone. Students can now log in to their accounts on their school’s website, where they can engage each other and their instructors through discussion boards and submit their homework assignments directly through a sub-site. The site is constantly updated, as the instructor posts homework assignments, announcements and links to articles and videos.
It sounds like online education, and it is, but this type of learning has evolved into what’s called hybrid learning, in which students attend class for lectures and exercises but do a large part of their work online. Many students who reap the advantages of this interactive online learning method are doing so using CourseSites by Blackboard software.
Blackboard, which was founded in 1999, is scheduled to launch its newest product, Next Generation CourseSites by Blackboard, by early winter. The new software will be free to instructors, who can have up to five “available,” or live, courses at once and a storage limit on each of 500 megabytes. The only stipulation for access is that the instructor cannot directly charge fees to students for using CourseSites by Blackboard.
The forthcoming product contains many enhancements from its predecessor, according to Jarl Jonas, senior product manager for Blackboard. Jonas says the product includes registration with open identification protocol through Web services such as Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, Windows Live and Yahoo, as well as an instructor home page at a personalized URL that will contain the instructor’s course list. The product also can display blog feeds, enable expedited course development with course structure templates and theme choices to support a variety of teaching styles, and has a navigation ribbon to keep tools and support information easily available.
“CourseSites is now a complete solution,” says Lara Oerter, vice president of product strategy and product marketing for Blackboard. “It is fully hosted, includes end-user support (phone, virtual chat and Web), includes self-paced training for instructors and even includes instructor-relevant functionability from other Blackboard platforms, including from Blackboard Connect, Blackboard Mobile and Blackboard Collaborate.”
The product was tested by 70 instructors (60 percent K-12 instructors, 30 percent higher education instructors and 10 percent professional educators — people who provide professional training courses, for example) from Aug. 18 to Sept. 30.
Dr. Howard L. Freeman, an online biology professor at Bethel University in McKenzie, Tenn., was a participant in the pilot program and a recent user of Legacy CourseSites by Blackboard.
