Building up Blackboard – showing what our VLE can do

After a year abroad in Austria I’m now back in Reading and involved with the Digitally Ready project once again!  I wrote a blog post before about the work I did with Cindy Becker on online placement support – Digitally Ready for employability.

I’m excited to be involved with the newly formed CQSD (Centre for Quality, Support and Development) on a 5 week placement as Communications Project Officer.

View from Whiteknights House

View from the office in Whiteknights House, main university campus

This placement has been organised through the Reading Internship Scheme and is to do with the training new academic staff go through when they join the university.

As this has been recently redesigned as the APP (Academic Practice Programme), the new courses need new Blackboard sites and this is the perfect opportunity for us to showcase some of the functionality that is available.  Our plan is to use this to its full potential so that lecturers get to see how they can use these resources as part of their teaching.

At the moment we’re looking at using features like a Wiki for assessment, Discussion board for FAQs and a Blog for introducing yourself.  These are features which are already available through Blackboard (using CampusPack), so we’re keen to use them to make online communication as easy as possible.  We are still getting all of this set up, so there isn’t much else to report for now – hopefully there will be some more information in the next couple of weeks and I’ll keep you updated via the blog.

About Simon Hyslop

Student at the University of Reading involved in the Digitally Ready project. On Twitter: @SCHyslop
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