Planning and Designing Your Course:
Blackboard makes posting course materials to the web very easy - and because of this ease, there is a tendency to start uploading files to your Blackboard course site without first taking some time to analyze and plan your strategy for integrating Blackboard into your instruction.
"If you don't know where you're going, you will probably end up somewhere else.
Lawrence Peter & Raymond Hull
This page is a starting point for a tutorial that walks through planning and designing your Blackboard course. The topics on this page include:
1. What are the possibilities?
First, it's important to examine different models for electronically interacting with your students and determine which makes the most sense for your course.
They can range from simply posting material to creating interactive learning environments:
| Posting Material: |
- providing the syllabus and other handouts online to improve convenience to access for the students
- providing materials to aid students in completing assignments - examples of successful assignments, practice exams
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| Interactive Learning Environments: |
- building learning modules/simulations to assist students in learning difficult concepts that require a lot of visualization, practice, or experience moving through materials via different perspectives
- utilizing transactional communications provided by a course management system such as Blackboard
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providing a framework for the day-to-day communications between faculty and student: announcing a reading assignment, quiz to review reading, posting of lecture notes, class discussion continued outside of class on discussion board
- a tutorial system which contains a computer tutoring system underneath would be an example of another
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2. Instructional Design:
Once you understand what is possible with Blackboard, an important next step is the instructional design of your course incorporating Blackboard. The ADDIE model of instructional design can help guide you through this process - it consists of the following phases:
| Analyze |
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- Define your instructional goals and objectives
- Analyze your audience.
- Analyze your current course.
- Analyze current course materials.
- Examine if and how Blackboard can help you meet your instructional goals and objectives. |
| Design & Develop |
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- Plan strategies to integrate Blackboard into your instruction.
- Design the structure and organizational scheme of your course site.
- Plan strategies for your course materials.
- Develop your course site structure.
- Upload existing course materials.
- Prepare materials for electronic delivery.
- The design and development phases occur very close together. |
| Implement |
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- Prepare your students to use Blackboard.
- Integrate Blackboard into your instruction. |
| Evaluate |
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- Evaluate your Blackboard course and the strategies you employed.
- Gather student feedback.
- Seek additional evaluation resources. |
The instructional design of a course is an iterative and ongoing process, with each of its phases being interdependent and overlapping.
Additional Resources:
Our number one resource on campus for teaching and learning resources is the:
Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence.
Resources that are helpful in planning and designing your course include:
• Questions to Guide Course Design Decisions
• Strategies for Common Difficulties in Planning Courses
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Course Request
