I think I went into this assignment feeling too confident after the completion of the Introductory Module. My initial plan was to design all the content for Unit 1 of the course, which would have included the listening component, pronunciation component and the end-of-unit task. I realized that this plan was too ambitious given the timeframe I had to work with. This was a good realization that despite my intentions online content does take quite a bit of time to develop effectively, especially when the developer is new to LMS. I decided to focus on Part 1 of Unit 1, the listening component, and to develop this more fully.
The listening component of Unit 1, proved to be a lot of work. I tried to work strategically starting from the learning outcomes and developing content that would scaffold students sufficiently for the tasks. I was able to explore a lot of digital tools and decided on Videoscribe and Emaze + Camtasia for the instructional videos that I created. I used Pixabay (https://pixabay.com/) and Negative Space (http://negativespace.co/) for pictures available under creative commons licensing. I also got experience using lots of new tools on Blackboard to build content such as the testing tool, discussion board, voiceboard, Mashups, and embedding different types of content (PDF files, photos, audio files, etc.). I also learned more about how to create different kinds of learning paths using modules and content folders.
That said I did at times find it very frustrating and limiting designing content on Blackboard. I felt it was very hard to design enough activities that promoted authentic interaction between students and between the instructor and students. A tool like Voicethread (http://voicethread.com/) would have enabled students to connect with the content and each other in a more dynamic way. I know that there is a Voicethread plug in for Blackboard, but many institutions like UBC do not provide this tool. I don’t like the design of the Blackboard Test/Quiz tool especially for ungraded practice activities. It feels very slow and clunky to navigate through the test format. I think in the future I would probably have my practice activities hosted on another site and have students access it via a link.
Overall, this was a great experience and despite some frustrations, I learned a lot and particularly enjoyed the design aspects of this project.
Click here to my the project documentation for the content module.
