Glenn Ross, Dr. Elijah E. Kresge Professor of Philosophy at Franklin and Marshall, first implemented Blackboard, the College's course management system, during Fall 2002. His interest in implementing Blackboard was sparked by his colleagues' use of the system to manage course materials.
At first, Professor Ross integrated Blackboard into a seminar on Philosophical Research. The course required students to write research papers and comment on their classmates' research papers as well. Prior to implementing Blackboard, students would have to make multiple copies of their work for distribution. Discovering that Blackboard had the capabilities of file exchange using the digital drop box, Professor Ross decided to institute the system into the seminar as well as other courses. Blackboard has since been implemented in each of his courses. Professor Ross has experimented with several features of Blackboard. The announcements feature is used regularly to post amendments to assignments or to communicate information to those enrolled in the course. The electronic gradebook component of Blackboard is utilized by Professor Ross to post grades for immediate student access. Posting documents and related course documents to the site also allows for immediate and continued student access. Students utilize the discussion board to comment on assigned readings.
In order to quickly learn students' names, Professor Ross captures each student's photo using a digital camera and posts the photos on the course site. This not only allows him to get to know each student by name early on in the semester, but also enables the students to become more familiar with one another at the same time. In the future, Professor Ross is looking forward to customizing certain features of Blackboard. He feels that students are used to the Blackboard interface as a place to go for information and look forward to the immediate access of course-related materials. |
|
|
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
| |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||
|