7:30am – 9:00am Registration and Coffee

9:00am – 9:05am Welcome

9:10am – 10:00am Mobile Friendly Blackboard Courses: Engaging Students by Optimizing Content for Mobile Devices
Speakers:
Vanessa Aller, Instructional Designer, Babson College
Kelly Dempsey, Instructional Technologist, Babson College

“Mobile-Friendly” may sound complex, but it can be simple: mobile learning lets students benefit from interacting with their course on the devices that they use to connect with every other aspect of their lives, 24/7. Making course materials easily accessible can improve student engagement and participation, and ultimately make a positive impact on learning outcomes and retention.

Mobile technology is not meant to address every aspect of a Blackboard course; but should be used strategically for features that translate best to mobile devices. Not everything you build as an instructor/designer will be mobile-friendly, nor should it be. In certain areas the mobile apps allow engagement into spaces that didn’t exist before (on the train, Starbucks café, between classes, gym, etc.).

In this session we will cover the latest Blackboard Mobile Apps (Mobile Learn and Bb Student) and demonstrate the revisions we made for Goldman Sachs 10K Small Businesses to make the course mobile-friendly.

Mobile-Friendly Practices:
• How to set up and personalize a course to be more “Mobile-Friendly.”
• Designing Rich Course Content
• Tools Available in Mobile Learn

10:00am - 10:30am Table Conversations/Break

10:30am – 11:15am Engaging Assignments, Discussions and Assessments: Engagement, the Internet, and Blackboard
Speakers:
Kyle Stephanie Kraus, Instructional Designer / Training Coordinator, University of Massachusetts - Amherst
Allison Rocheleau, Faculty & Student Training Associate, University of Massachusetts - Amherst

We’ll talk about creating engaging activities in face-to-face and online courses using resources from the Internet and tools in Blackboard Learn.
Whether using resources to spark conversation, creating interactive assessments or thought provoking assignments, the Internet provides a vast source for educating students today. We’ll talk about how to take websites that we use in everyday life and put an educational spin on them. We’ll go from the conceptual to the practical with series of real-life examples that you can use in your courses.

11:15am – 12:00pm Making Online Faculty Training More Agile with Blackboard Badges
Speakers:
Jeremy Anderson, Manager of Academic Computing, American International College
Kaitlin Walsh, Instructional Designer/Technologist, American International College

As colleges increase their online course offerings, so does the need to train faculty to transition to the online format. Also, with a number of these online courses being taught by adjuncts who work full time or teach elsewhere, perhaps the biggest challenge is finding the time to complete the training. How do we cover the points they need to know in the little time they have? And how do we make the training relevant or meaningful to those who have had previous training elsewhere?
At American International College, we sought to address these challenges by using a competency-based badge system to support our training program for faculty teaching online. Faculty complete tasks to demonstrate their mastery of Blackboard skills, online pedagogy and AIC policies and procedures, with each set of tasks leading to a badge. Faculty who already have experience in these areas can demonstrate their competencies in alternate methods to earn their badges. This presentation will provide an overview of AIC’s redeveloped training program for faculty teaching online. We will address considerations of structure and implementation, as well as the benefits for full- and part-time faculty.

12:00pm – 1:00pm Lunch

1:00pm – 1:50pm Using Course-Level Analytics to Understand Student Activity
Speakers:
Shannon Graham-Cornell, Customer Success Advocates, Blackboard
Tristan Plummer, Customer Success Advocates, Blackboard

Faculty who use Blackboard can take the lead in their campus’s retention efforts by using powerful course-level analytics tools to assess their students’ performance and determine who may be at risk. By using Blackboard’s Retention Center, Course Reports, and Performance Dashboard, faculty can access the data they need to help their students before it’s too late. Join us to learn why, how, and when to use these tools to increase your insights into student activity and performance within your courses.

2:00pm – 2:50pm Introducing Blackboard’s New Learning Experience
Speaker:David Rosenbaum, Senior Solutions Engineer, Blackboard

During this session, you’ll learn more about Blackboard’s New Learning Experience and new products and capabilities including Learn, Collaborate and Mobile. We’ll also share more about the availability of our new versions and how you can experience these new products.

2:50pm - 3:00pm Wrap up and end