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Blackboard Community Engagement Training

"Creativity: a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual."
- Arthur Koestler

Day 1 Blackboard Community Engagement Training
Let's just say this statement says it all for me. Going through the first day of the Blackboard Community Engagement was a little of a refresher for the basic LMS system we have. However, the afternoon was a totally different story.

Ideas...Community Engagement will be able to create a one system for all information. Whether this is for Tri-Campus, KSDL, or HR, information will be a one source for internal information that can be updated and disseminated. Yes we have sharepoint, but this is something that we can utilize for delivering information.

Clinton's idea for the new design is right on the mark. With the content management and community engagement, both of these will allow for the content to be displayed creating the $1 menu we keep talking about.

Also, as I have heard from various individuals in our team, this "community" or "house" we are trying to build will happen over time when we move to the community engagement component of Blackboard.

Day 2 Blackboard Community Engagement Training
One of the neat features they allow you to do in this system is add in Hotlinks (but, only with the Community Engagement piece). I always hear Joan saying, "Can we make that bigger?" In the case of trying to look for the log out, we can add a Hotlink or Hotspot and add a icon for log out. It would be bigger and maybe located in the top right hand corner. And, we can make the text bigger for some of the other things at the top by editing the font size in the language pack. That brings me to the next item.

The language packs can not only be used for different international languages, but can also be for organizational language. You can change the terms to the familiar organizational terms. For example, you can copy a language pack, export it, change the terms using a text editor program such as TextEditor or EditPad Pro you can replace the terms.

Oh, here is a really good idea. We could also create a language pack for Hawaiian language. We would need to invest the time to sit down and then change the terms to Hawaiian language, but I think it would be well worth the investment. Oh, in my humble opinion if it counts, hehe! But, in speaking with Steven, we could actually do this now. So who's up for the task?

What this does is it changes the menu and function items, but not the content in the courses.

Now your asking the question, "So what happens when we upgrade?" Well, Blackboard will create file telling you where the upgrades are and what the differences are between your old Language Pack and where the upgrade happen. This cuts down the time of figuring out where to update the terms.

Many of the things mentioned above can be done now with our existing system. However, I think this will be added to our Bb Enterprise work flow for the branding and customization.

To look at the training presentation materials, click here to download.

The rest of the training was how to set up your Communities, which was really interesting and Steven is ready for the project.

Comments

Dorothy said…
Mahalo for sharing Cassie. Looking forward to when we move towards one system with the community engagement component added on. :)

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