Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Engaging Students Visually for Better Outcomes

Check out link below to view the intro video for "Engaging Students Visually for Better Outcomes" that will be held at the Professional Development Day next week.

Part  1.
Learn how to get the best of up-to-date story elements, lesson training, social media and other content into your course quickly. Shave hours off of your development time and give your course content that is relevant and easy to create. Organize and use content assets across courses and share them with others in your department or across campus.
Part  2.
Create animation videos quickly and easily, and then share them with you students. This is more than sewing images together into a slideshow, or narrating over existing material. You can literally sit down at your computer and produce great-looking animation videos from scratch - within minutes - without having to draw or operate a camera.
Depending on time constraints we will then continue with easy to use imaging editing tools that can assist you in creating dynamic pictures for your courses. 

No prior experience necessary for all training.

Blackboard 9.1 Tip: Create a Test in Excel-Upload to Blackboard

Typing test questions in excel and uploading them to blackboard is an easy and quick feature added to blackboard 9.1. You can type in an excel several types of questions in excel, save your file (Tab delimited) (*.txt) format and upload the file to blackboard through the test canvas.

-   Open Microsoft Excel, type in your questions as in the following example

First column(A) in the excel sheet identifies the question type ; for example  type MC is for multiple choice and TF is for true or false

The second column (B) is the question text. Type in the question

The third  column (C) is for the answer

For multiple choice question the fourth column (D) will indicate if the question is correct or incorrect- You need to type in correct or type incorrect. Following Columns will include the answer, followed by the column   indicating if the question is correct or incorrect.



-When you have finished your test questions, from excel file menu select save as  



-Type in the name of the test and In the Save as type, from the drop down menu select Text (Tab Delimited), and then click Save



- To upload the test questions to blackboard- From within your course shell Control Panel, Click Course Tools, Click Tests, Surveys, and Pools- Click Tests

- Click the Build Test button.
-  Enter a name for the test (required), description (optional) and instructions (optional)-  Click Submit.

-   In the Test Canvas, click the button to Upload Questions.


Browse your computer to locate your .txt file with the test questions- Enter a point value for the test questions- Click Submit.


 Your test questions will then appear in the Test Canvas. You can edit the question by clicking on the action link next to the question text or enter individual questions’ point values by clicking in the point’s box.


To deploy the test in a content area Navigate to the content area where you would like to place your Click the Assessments button and then choose Test from the drop down menu.
Select your test from the list. -Click Submit.

         Next, choose the Test Options: when to make your test available, set a timer, force completion,
Click submit

Following a video tutorial from Blackboard On demand.