Blackboard Teams Tool - spu.edu · Student Manual Is Posted on Blackboard under Course ... base (a digital collection of knowledge and information) to support the course materials.”

3/16/06 Braden Teams LX

Blackboard Teams Tool

Collaborative Communities for Students to Assist Critical Thinking

Kathleen BradenGalyn Bunnell

Kristina DeMain


GEO 3500: Geography of Natural Resources Winter 2006 Experiment

with Teams LX• What I hoped to accomplish with this on-

line tool added to Blackboard• How it was organized and used in the

course winter 2006• The outcome- what worked and what

didn’t; what could be done differently next time

• Student perspective as learners and users


Open-Sourcing and Wikis• My dissatisfaction

with Fall Economic Geography course

• Friedman book: flattener #4: Open-sourcing: “Everyone should have free access to all human knowledge”

• The idea of Wikipedia


Networked Learning

• Centre for Research on Networked Learning


Goals for GEO 3500

1. Help students think critically about web-based information

2. Students to learn by constructing course knowledge via Teams LX and Wikiproject

3. Instructor to evaluate student contribution using Teams LX

I hear and I forget;

I see and I understand;

I do and I remember.

~ Chinese proverb

How It Will HappenInitial Team Meeting

Each team member generates readings & ideas

TEAM selects focus, key reading

Class Members read and react

Team Selects Best Response

TEAM designs 2 class activities




FinalExam

What’s Different About Wikiproject from Merely a Group Activity?

• Feedback Loop and Construction of Ideas-this should emerge as a dynamic process

• TEAMS technology provides ability for Braden and classmate interaction, along principles of Wikipedia

• TEAMS technology allows Braden to assess your participation at a detailed level

You need to be prepared to help me assess at end of quarter whether this tool is worth a permanent purchase for the university

USING TEAMSStudent Manual Is Posted on Blackboard under Course

Information (Adobe Acrobat format)“Teams LX provides instructors with a tool for creating group

projects and assignments as well as an editable knowledge base (a digital collection of knowledge and information) to support the course materials.”

“Teams LX is a tool for problem based learning. Teams allows students to work cooperatively in groups as they seek to formulate, organize and present their solutions online in the form of rich media websites. Using an easy to use browser-based editor, students collaboratively author web content, upload images, link to documents and external resources. Teams provides instructors a rich set of assessment tools that allow them to gauge the individual contributions of each student and to track the changes being made to the group site.”

USING TEAMS on Blackboard

DOMESTIC POLICY TEAM

CIVIL SOCIETY TEAM

INTERNATIONALPOLICY TEAM

THEOLOGY TEAM

BUSINESS TEAM

Governance: how does society make choices about use of resources?


Using Teams LX

Learning Objects CompanyTeams LX uses wiki technology to provide

students and instructors with tools for

collaboratively creating rich media

websites within the course management

environment. Sharing a common online

workspace, users author content,

assemble research, and present their work

product.



Steps to Adding a Teams Site to Blackboard

• Decide on the assignment you want to give students

• Let’s say you decide to have students create a common document in two teams and place the projects under “Course Documents”

• You will note in control panel that all SPU faculty now can access Teams on Blackboard



Then Add a Team Site Under Course DocumentsWhile in control

panel, go to Course Documents and look in upper right hand corner under “Select”, then scroll to bottom to see Teams Site


Configure Each TeamOnce you tell Blackboard you want to add a team, a dialog box will open that will allow you to make comments about it, select team members from class list, or pre-designated group, set up dates for access, decide who gets to edit, etc.


Using the Team Site

Students can then start to create a document but should be saving at least a home page to allow comments from non-Team members later. Using Page History and Page List, you (or students) can view all work that’s been done and all changed versions. Students can embed images, documents, websites, data, even PowerPoints.


Instructor Can get a History of Who Has Made What Contributions

• Go to control panel• Assess/Export Teams Site


Instructor Can View Contributions

Instructor can click View Detail


Change History Highlights What an Individual Team Member Has Done


What Can Go Wrong? Learning From My Mistakes

• Making it unnecessarily complicated for students- suggest starting out with one Wiki on one part of Blackboard

• Give students clear instructions and help them get started with format for a document

• explain how their contributions show up and are assessed (otherwise, they may be contributing off the Team site and you can’t see it to verify)

• If you use them, make comments mandatory or rewarded somehow by non-Team members


Taking Next Step for Critical Thinking

• Need to link Wiki-approach with critical thinking about Internet

• Students need to be assessing validity of sites they find

• Suggest creation of controversial common document that would force coming to consensus or at least seeing modifications


Some Ideas from Students• Start out with simple approach -just use Teams on one

spot of Blackboard so students can get accustomed to it• Make the document around a controversial topic so there

well be interest in developing and modifying• Instructor should be referee and critic from beginning-

students need guidance!• Instructor should establish some specific check-in and

grading points along the way to discourage slackers & procrastinators

• Need to find any short document as “sourdough starter”to get students going- it’s hard for them otherwise to know how to plunge in

• This might not be an appropriate tool for freshmen• Comments should be structured to be meaty and not just

busy-work because students have to comment


Braden Conclusions• I will use the Teams tool again and

keep refining it• We have to find a different way to

equip our students to manage the vast amount of information available to them on internet

• We have to help them be critical knowledge constructors and not just passive recipients

• At end of day, they are still students and need as much guidance as we can offer