Using Blackboard to Manage Students’ Projects
Philip Barker
University of Teesside, UK
P.G.Barker@tees.ac.uk
Abstract: Practical projects play an important role in developing students’ problem solving skills
and enhancing their knowledge of a specific area of study. However, from a course-supervisor’s
perspective, their management and assessment can be a highly labour-intensive activity. This paper
describes some research that we have undertaken relating to the use of a virtual learning
environment (Blackboard) in order to automate some of the management tasks and problems
inherent in project supervision - while increasing the quality of students’ learning experiences.
Introduction
Practical projects are an important mechanism for providing undergraduate students with opportunities to develop
knowledge and skills that are not easily presented in or derived from lectures or course-reading material. A practical
project usually involves a student performing one or more tasks in a suitably designed study environment - for
example, a laboratory, a simulation, a virtual reality setting, a field trip or some other form of off-campus
expedition. The type of environment that is used for practical work will often depend critically on the subject area
involved and the skills and knowledge that are to be acquired. For example, medical students will often undertake
‘practical work’ within relevant parts of a hospital environment while budding chefs may be exposed to experiences
within a hotel’s kitchen. Obviously, project environments and the resources to support them need to be carefully
chosen in order to ensure that students derive maximum benefit from them.
There are three main generic types of project experience to which students are likely to be exposed during their
courses of study:
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First, there is the type of project that acts as an adjunct to a main course of study (Barker, 2004;
2006a). For example, a course XYZ may be organised into a series of lectures, a collection of
reflection periods, some tutorials and a set of practical classes within which students undertake small
projects related to the main topic areas with which the subject is concerned. For example, in a
computer engineering course, typical practical projects might involve developing a piece of
software, performing a task analysis as part of an interface design and producing a printed-circuit
board.
Second, is the type of project in which a student chooses a topic of study and then researches this
topic with the ultimate aim of producing a relatively new ‘contribution to knowledge’ or a tangible
product that can be manufactured or used to improve the quality of people’s lives. This type of
project is often referred to as an ‘individual project’.
Third, is the kind of project that involves students becoming involved in cooperative and
collaborative work with other students. These are often referred to as ‘group projects’ - sometimes
called ‘team projects’. In this type of project a small group of students (usually involving 3-6
people) work together in order to achieve some pre-defined objective - as defined in the project
specification.
Each of the above types of project has its advantages and disadvantages. Furthermore, each type can be used to
foster and enhance particular kinds of learning and teaching activity. Of the three types of project described above,
this paper deals with management issues related to individual projects from the perspective of a project supervisor’s
role. It describes and discusses how a virtual learning environment (such as Blackboard) can facilitate the
management of undergraduate final-year projects.
The Components of an Online Learning System
Bearing in mind what has been said above, it is important to consider the types of learning environment that are
available for the support of the activities involved in managing project students’ practical activities. In most
academic organisations electronic learning is becoming a prominent mechanism for delivering educational material
to students (Holmes and Gardner, 2006). Indeed, a virtual learning environment (VLE) is now often used to control
many aspects of the delivery of educational resources to students. However, it is important to realise that the nature
of the various systems and sub-systems that make up an educational environment are quite varied and complex.
Each component interacts with other systems in quite sophisticated ways. Figure 1 illustrates a typical example of
the sub-systems involved in an online learning environment and the ways in which they interact with one another.
Figure 1: Organisational resources to support electronic learning.
At the top level in this diagram, the ‘world-wide’ (W/W) sub-systems include the Internet and other private global
communications networks. The central campus-wide (C/W) systems shown in this example involve the
organisation’s library, its student administration system, different types of media centre, various sorts of virtual
research environment and, of course, its VLE. In this diagram, Blackboard is used as the example
(http://www.blackboard.com) - but many other such systems are often commonly used (for example, Moodle,
FirstClass and WebCT). From the perspective of learning and teaching, the interaction between an organisation’s
library and its VLE is an extremely important one (Secker, 2004; Catherall, 2005).
Another important type of system depicted in Figure 1 is the departmental-wide (D/W) system. These are used for
providing and administering subject-orientated resources to students that have enrolled in courses that a given
department provides. One of the most useful systems in this category is the departmental intranet (Barker, 1999).
This type of facility can be used to make available online course documentation and provide a software-download
capability which students can use in order to obtain copies of any software items that are essential for their study
activities.
Using the Blackboard VLE
Although it suffers from several limitations, Blackboard has become a popular online environment for the delivery
of digital learning resources to users in corporate organisations and to students within academic environments.
Within my own organisation, for example, each of the five schools (Computing, Business, Arts and Media, Science
and Technology and Social Science and Law) that make up the academic structure of the university makes use of
this system for delivering some of their courses. In some schools (such as Computing) where there is substantial
e-learning expertise, the entries in the Blackboard course catalogue usually often consist simply of links to teaching
and learning resources that are held on a departmental intranet. In the case study that is described in this paper,
some of the supporting course resources are embedded within the Blackboard system while others are held on either
an intranet facility or an external Web site,
Course Design
In order to create a Blackboard module to facilitate the management of student projects it was first necessary to
identify the basic activities and functions which made up the essential ‘core tasks’ involved in the management
functions that were to be undertaken. The major activities involved were as follows: (1) communicating details of
project-related material to students (for example, rules and regulations relating to project submission dates,
assessment criteria, report-writing guidelines, and so on); (2) undertaking two-way communication with students
(using both face-to-face and electronic discussions) on matters relating to the progress being made and the problems
being encountered; (3) monitoring students’ progress (through the use of appropriate documents - both paper-based
and electronic) and providing appropriate feedback; (4) acting as a mentor to enable students to ‘test out’ their ideas;
and (5) ensuring that students keep appropriate project-related documentation throughout the life-cycle of their
projects.
Bearing in mind the above requirements, and the facilities available for their realisation within the Blackboard VLE,
a system design similar to that depicted in Figure 2 was created.
Figure 2 Course navigation facility.
The structure depicted in Figure 2 was mapped directly onto a Blackboard module (called ‘PGB-Projects 2006/7’)
in order to produce a top-level entry page similar to that depicted in Figure 3.
Figure 3: Entry page to the ‘PGB-Projects 2006/7’ Blackboard module.
As can be seen in this figure, from a student’s perspective, the top-level end-user interface to the Blackboard VLE
consists of two essential display areas: a course-menu area (shown on the left-hand side of the screen) and, to the
right of this, a content-delivery area.
Sometimes, depending upon how they are designed, certain learning
resources will use additional and separate display windows for the presentation of their content. Using this
approach, it is possible to create quite powerful blended-learning environments that utilise a number of different
resources in a sequential and/or simultaneous fashion (Barker, 2006b; 2006c).
Users of the module depicted in Figure 3 navigate through its resources using two basic techniques: selection of
various options from the course menu; and by activation of the various hyperlinks that are embedded within the
various display items. Some examples of embedded hyperlinks can be seen within the content-display area shown
in the diagram. Naturally, the course menu is a particularly important resource for students. Considerable care
therefore needs to taken in order to ensure that its design is appropriate for the needs of the course in which it is
used. Usually, a course menu is produced from a default template provided by the Blackboard VLE; items can be
removed from or added to this template in order to tailor its contents to the needs of any particular course.
Tailoring the Course Menu
Naturally, each course that is delivered via Blackboard will need to have different course-menu options that are
related to the nature of that course, the facilities that its users need to access and the activities that they need to
undertake during the course. System designers can modify the contents of the course-menu area using the ‘Manage
Course Menu’ option within the Blackboard control panel. Table 1 shows the course-menu options used in the
Blackboard ‘PGB-Projects 2006/7’ module.
There are various ways in which the menu options listed in the course-menu area can be implemented. For example,
links can be made to resources held on internal/external organisational web sites or to material and resources that are
available through (or embedded within) the Blackboard system itself. Thus, in Table 1 the ‘Announcements’ and
‘Project Areas’ options are each internal to Blackboard while the ‘F2F Meetings’ and ‘WebDocs’ options are,
essentially, links to external Web sites containing HTML and various other types of document. Similarly, the ‘Ethics
Forms’ and ‘Projects Documents’ menu options are links to items that are held on a departmental intranet server
(see Figure 1).
Table 1: Menu options and their associated functionality.
Menu Option
Announcements
Email
Project Areas
Journal and Wiki
F2F Meetings
Ethics Forms
Diary Sheets
Project Documents
WebDocs
Function
Gives access to broadcasts from tutor
Provides electronic mail facilities
Links to students’ individual project areas
Access to electronic resources
Timetable for face-to-face meetings with students
Notes about completing ethics forms
Template for weekly diary sheet report
Links to relevant intranet documents
Links to relevant external Internet documents
Project Areas
Undoubtedly, one of the most important resources within the ‘PGB-Projects’ e-learning environment was the project
areas that it contained. These were organised into three basic types: an individual private area for each student; an
individual private staff area for the course tutor; and a general area to which all students in the cohort had access.
The private individual student areas were intended to be used to support computer-mediated communication
between a specific student and the course tutor. The communal course area was intended to be used for group
communication so that students could communicate with each other and share experience in an ‘open’ public way.
Embedded within each project area there were two essential Blackboard resources: a discussion-board facility and a
file-sharing capability. There was also an email facility but, as is discussed later, its use was not encouraged unless
some ‘exceptional’ circumstances warranted its use. The relationship between these resources is depicted
schematically in Figure 4.
Figure 4: Important resources for computer-mediated project management.
The file sharing capability depicted in Figure 4 enabled each student (and his/her tutor) to upload and download files
of any sort. Therefore, files that a student wanted a tutor to see could be placed in this area for viewing. Likewise,
any files a tutor wanted a specific student to see could also be placed in this area. General file sharing (within the
whole cohort) could be achieved via the file-sharing area within the general project area to which all students had
access.
The discussion-board area depicted in Figure 4 was the mainstay of the computer-mediated communication that took
place between the course tutor and the individual students (or the group of students as a whole). We have made
extensive studies of the use of electronic dialogue for supporting students’ learning within the Blackboard VLE
(Webb, 2006). Logically, the important entities that make up any given discussion board are: forums, threads and
postings. The formal relationship between these may be expressed as follows:
<discussion-board> ::= [<forum>]{1:N}
<forum> ::= [<thread>]{1:M}
<thread> ::= [<posting>] {1:P}
<posting> ::= <student-to-student> | <student-to-tutor> | <tutor-to-student>
Essentially, the postings are the basic messages that are sent to a given discussion thread within the context of a
particular forum. On each individual discussion board, the forums were organised into a standard structure to reflect
important events or activities taking place within the execution of a student’s project. The ones used in this course
were as follows: Personal Issues, Project Specification, Project Planning, Project Report, Important Milestones,
Deliverables, Semester-1 Tasks and Semester-2 Tasks. Within the environment created for this course, only the tutor
could create forums. However, both the tutor and the students could create threads within any given forum.
Within the notation used above to describe the relationship between the discussion-board objects, it is important to
emphasise that <student-to-student> postings can only occur within the context of the general discussion-board area
- to which, all students have access. Of course, the other types of posting can occur within any discussion-board
context.
Use of Weblogs and Wikis
Both weblogs and wikis have become important tools for sharing ideas and documenting knowledge (Clyde, 2004;
Klobas, 2006; Ebersbach, Glaser and Heigl, 2006; Barker, 2007). It was therefore felt important that these tools
should be made available for students to use within their practical projects. Bearing this requirement in mind, the
entry in the course-menu area labelled ‘Journal & Wiki’ (see Figure 3) was used to provide students with access to
their individual weblog area (called a ‘journal’ in Blackboard) and the communal wiki area (dubbed the ‘Team Site’
in Blackboard parlance). The appearance of the root page of the project wiki is shown in Figure 5.
Figure 5: The root page of the communal project wiki.
As can be seen from this diagram, each student in the course cohort (and the tutor too) was allocated a ‘home page’.
The links to these individual pages are represented in Figure 5 by each user’s name (shown underlined). There is a
special page (called ‘FunkyDunky’) that anyone in the group can use as a sort of ‘sandbox’ area for testing purposes.
Clicking on one of the hyperlinks depicted in Figure 5 (apart from ‘FunkyDunky’) would result in the display of that
user’s home page. Thus, selecting the user ‘Philip Barker’ would cause the tutor’s home page within the wiki to be
displayed - as depicted in Figure 6.
Figure 6: Wiki home page for the course tutor.
The page illustrated in Figure 6 was intended to be used as a sort of ‘model’ that students could use as a basis for the
entry page into their own personal project area within the wiki. That is, each student was expected to post a small
pass-port size photograph along with a short description of his/her practical project and a short list of keyword
descriptors related to the project. The latter were intended to facilitate information retrieval using the wiki’s search
facility.
The weblog capability in Blackboard provided a useful journal facility for students to document their project
observations, findings and reflections on their work. As part of their project reporting requirements, students were
required to complete weekly ‘diary sheets’ that had to be ‘signed off’ by their project supervisor. In previous years
students used paper versions of the diary document. However, during the current academic year, they were given
the option of using the Blackboard journal facility to make time-ordered entries that the tutor could see and, if
necessary, comment on. Most students used and preferred this latter approach. However, one or two did prefer to
use paper diary sheets due to the difficulty of printing out diary entries from within Blackboard.
Course Implementations
Experiments with the use of Blackboard for use as an electronic tool for helping to manage students’ projects
commenced two years ago. The first (prototype) course was implemented during the 2005/2006 academic year.
The second implementation of the learning environment was realised during the current academic year - 2006/2007.
The underlying design was identical for the two course presentations. Indeed, the courses only differed in respect to
the use of additional resources (wiki and weblogs) in the more recent implementation. A third presentation of the
course is planned for an upcoming 2007/2008 cohort of students. This will involve the use of additional tools - such
as an online chat facility. It is also intended to explore the use of SMS texting (via mobile phones) in order to
provide an ubiquitous alerting and reminder mechanism for course participants.
Feedback from Students
Towards the end of the course, each of the students in the 2006/2007 cohort was interviewed in order to assess what
the group felt about the use of this approach to final-year project management. The interviews were also used (1) to
elicit opinions about the Blackboard system (in relation to its use in this context) and (2) to determine if students felt
that using this tool, in the way that it had been used, had improved the quality of their learning experience and, if so,
in what ways.
Although most students had had some prior experience with the Blackboard system (from the other modules that
they had been studying), the overall impression gained from students was that it was an awkward and sometimes
user-unfriendly system to use. However, many students did confess that once they had got used to it, it seemed to
‘grow on them’. One of the strongest positive feelings that students seemed to project was the usefulness of the
electronic resources that the system made available - file storage, online conferences and (especially) the journal and
wiki facilities. Another positive comment made by many of the students related to the ease with which the
Blackboard system could facilitate distant learning; instead of having to travel into the university, it was possible to
‘chat’ to the tutor ‘online’ through their own personal tutor/student conference facility.
Conclusion
Virtual learning environments such as Blackboard have become a very compelling force in the implementation of elearning spaces. Naturally, the facilities that they offer will vary considerably from one product offering to another.
The situation is further complicated by the fact that the vendors of such systems are continually improving and
enhancing their products in order to gain a competitive edge on their competitors and also meet the continually
changing needs of their client base. Although VLEs have been used extensively for the implementation of
‘conventional’ approaches to electronic learning, there have been few reports of the use of such systems for helping
to manage students’ practical projects. The basic rational underlying the research described in this paper has
therefore stemmed from our motivation to want to explore the utility of a VLE for the purpose of managing students
practical projects. This paper has therefore attempted to describe our experiences in this area in the hope that they
will be of benefit to the broader community of academic staff that may also be involved in this type of activity.
Despite the implementation effort that has been involved, we believe the approach is beneficial both to students and
to the staff involved in the supervision of the projects. Indeed, our positive experiences of using this approach in
previous years will warrant its further use and development in future years.
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