Hi Helen

I have only this year taken over  the role as Blackboard Administrator
at our college, and until recently I was kept away from training staff,
due to my our department commitments. But I decided to encourage
Blackboard usage I would have to run some CPD sessions, below are some
ideas I went by -

Firstly I mentioned the possibility of running this training, setting a
standard at a meeting where our vice principal was present,  she had the
CPD details cascaded in her name through all the departments, to contact
myself directly but with most of the information included.

I kept the sessions quite informal and at about an hour. Emailed back if
any questions left unanswered

When staff emailed to book a time, I requested what their current
understanding of Blackboard was, and where / how they wanted to use it.
Nothing complicated just ideas. This way people were put into little
groups of like minded staff.

A specific week was hard to plan, so I ran a Monday / Tuesday one week.
Then Wednesday / Thursday the following.

We have many college campus sites, but I kept to one, for department
reasons - this was actually probably limiting, but I had the time of
year on my side.

On their reminder emails, not only did I have the date of their
training, I included a basic presentation to introduce new staff to the
basics. Screen shots got them used to the screens without them getting
lost through clicking. Plus I prompted them to login and check they knew
their passwords, so as to save time on the day.

A sales pitch was needed, in this case - what was already on Blackboard
to aid them and save them time. What common questions are asked by
students and where could students or staff find these answers on
blackboard.

- I'm not saying these sessions were perfect by any means, especially as
they were my first. But hopefully individual needs were met. I did have
the benefit of my predecessor who had made various helpsheets for
Blackboard, and I made sure he was credited at each session!

I hope this helps and that I didn't go off topic
Regards
Ty 


-----Original Message-----
From: Blackboard/Courseinfo userslist
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Davies
Helen.M.
Sent: 13 August 2010 16:08
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: e-learning Training Provision

Hi all,

Here at Swansea, we are looking at reviewing our e-learning training
sessions for the coming academic year.  Historically, we offer sessions
specifically on our VLE (Blackboard) and also on a wide variety of
external tools/ content types (eg blogs, wikis, podcasts, screencasts
etc).

We have found that take up is usually fairly good for the new areas
(twitter was one of the highlights this year), but are dwindling for
others.  Some areas have very little take-up, yet we think they could be
important, for instance Social Bookmarking (using Delicious).

The format that we run is a one hour training session (different times,
different days) followed by an optional hour if they want to stay and
play with the tools and/or ask questions.  We have a website with an
events calendar that we advertise on, with an RSS Feed that links into
Blackboard, as well as an all-staff email.

What I'd like to ask is, what format(s) do you run your training
sessions in, how do you advertise and promote them, and how successful
are they (rough % take up)?

Many thanks in advance for this information - please feel free to reply
on or off list.

Regards

Helen Davies
Swansea University


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