Mandy mentions Merlin's ability to show who has read a message. I found this
feature helpful in my online OU course (OUs own bulletin board).
I'm really interested in discussion board features and how they affect
discourse and learning and have started making a list of features I've seen
that are likely to support teaching and learning. If anyone else is
interested we could draw up a fuller list together and include details of
the products that have the feature and what
pedagogic/cognitive/administrative effects they might have.
Here are a few:
facility to link a thread to a specific course document and vice versa
bookmarking
archiving facility
wysiwig formatting of messages
group threads and file areas
search in messages
withdraw own message (replace with statement of reason for withdrawal)
offline client for reading at leisure
option to view full text of thread
search by author
keyword creation and marking system
define function of message (eg disagreement or example) ie scaffolding
Hope to hear from folk with a similar bee in their bonnet.
Rhiannon
Rhiannon Williams
Instructional Designer
Centre for Applied Research in Educational Technologies
University of Cambridge
++1223 765387
www.caret.cam.ac.uk
-----Original Message-----
From: Virtual Learning Environments [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf
Of Mandy Bentham
Sent: 11 October 2001 10:05
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Which VLE?
Hello Sarah,
There has been a lot of discussion about the functionality of the Blackboard
disucssion board amongst my colleagues lately. So we are going to be having
a workshop shortly where members of academic staff can share their
experiences of using dbs with their students. Vis-a-vis Bb and Webct
discussion boards, I would say they were much the same animal (no
coincidence I'm sure!). But to a great extent it's not the technology but
our limited understanding of how they can be used effectively which is the
issue. Graham Gibbs ( of co-mentor fame) is doing research into this at
Huddersfield and will be leading our
session)(http://webdb.ucs.ed.ac.ukuk/malts/ALTC/usr_programme_all.cfm)
the workshop will be followed by an online disucssion that you are more than
welcome to participate in - let me know and I'll send you details.
I have been looking at another VLE lately - Merlin (Uni of Hull) and am v
impressed with their disucssion board facilities(students can opt in/out of
receiving an email notification if there is a new posting/ whoever has read
the posting is listed/you can click on the persons name and go straight to
their personal page to read their profile etc).
Best wishes, Mandy
***************** List information: *****************
Remember - replies go by default to the entire list.
Access the list via the web on http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/vle.html
To unsubscribe, email [log in to unmask] with the message: leave vle
|