Technology Group KBContains Business-specific documentation for administering Blackboard and is password protected.

Student KBContains answers to questions commonly asked by students.

Staff KBContains answers to questions commonly asked by professors and other staff.

lorraine.nichols@ualberta.ca | @lorrainenicholsLorraine Nichols | Web and E-Learning Specialist, Alberta School of Business | University of Alberta

• Branded Blackboard as uLearn and implemented the Blackboard Learning System in 2005• Added Blackboard Collaborate, Community, and Mobile in 2012• Provide service to over 3000 students and 200 instructors • Offered 652 courses in 2011–2012

The School’s three Knowledge Bases were created using MediaWiki in 2011. MediaWiki is easy to update and offers a history which indicates who made which updates. We will add a mobile-friendly link to these KBs in our Bb Mobile app in August 2012.

Gain Insight Into How People Use The Knowledge Base

Using Google Analytics to Improve our Staff Knowledge Base

About Us

• Unique Pageviews: Most articles are visited only once (a unique pageview) but there are two exceptions: How do I enter grades into Instructor Self Service (Bear Tracks)? and How do I add an item? This indicates that people refer back to those articles more than once.

• Average Time on Page: A long average time on page indicates engagement and that people read the article online. A short average time on page indicates: 1) People who visited didn’t find what they were looking for and left, 2) People printed the article rather than reading it online, or 3) This article has links to other articles and is not one on which people will linger.

• Pageviews: The higher the number, the more often the page was viewed.

• Entrances: Pages with a high number of entrances let us know which articles are landing pages. Most of these people would have come to the article through an email link.

• Bounce Rate: Tells us the number of single page visits – that is the number of people who visited just that article and then left the wiki.

• % Exit: A low % indicates that people who read the article went on to read other articles while a high % indicates that after reading the article people immediately left the wiki.

Page Pageviews Unique Pageviews Avg. Time on Page Entrances Bounce Rate % ExitBlackboard/uLearn 479 326 0:00:43 115 14.78% 11.27%How do I enter grades into Instructor Self Service (Bear Tracks)? 323 179 0:03:33 145 48.97% 44.27%How do I make a course Available or Unavailable? 71 65 0:03:45 14 78.57% 76.06%How do I add a user with a CCID to my course? 70 58 0:04:37 33 72.73% 67.14%Why can’t I view or print PDF files? 70 62 0:03:31 49 87.76% 78.57%Frequently asked questions at the beginning of a semester 67 55 0:00:16 23 17.39% 20.90%How do I add grades? 61 43 0:03:24 3 33.33% 24.59%How do I download student grades into Excel? 32 26 0:00:50 0 0.00% 31.25%How do I merge two or more sections of a course into one course? 31 24 0:01:41 3 33.33% 58.06%How do I copy the contents of one course into another? 30 22 0:03:26 5 80.00% 56.67%How do I add an item? 28 17 0:04:03 3 33.33% 28.57%

What This Information Tells Us

36 Unique Search Terms

We have added Google Analytics as an extension to MediaWiki. A site search pages report provides the search terms that staff use when searching the KB. We add those terms to existing articles and create new articles to answer questions not currently answered. Here are the words people used in 2011-2012 when searching for answers to Blackboard questions.

Other • Blackboard• iPad• Deleting a File• Deploy a Test• Posting a Document to uLearn• Uploading a Document to uLearn, Upload

Add People• Add Instructor• How to Put a Guest Into uLearn, Guest uLearn• Make Course Available, Available

Grading• Grading, Grades• Bear Track, Beartracks• Detailed Marks• Create Weighted Column• How to Upload Grades• Letter Grades• Electronic Grading• uLearn Grade Centre

Merge Courses • Merge • Combine Sections uLearn, Combine Courses on uLearn• Export Course

Knowledge Bases (KB)

About the Alberta School of Business, University of Alberta

About uLearn

The Alberta School of Business is located in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Founded in 1916, it is a research-intensive publicly funded institution, and is consistently ranked in the top 50 publicly funded universities for research by the Financial Times of London.The School has 2,025 undergraduate, 500 full and part-time MBA, and 60 doctoral students, as well as over 23,000 alumni.