I was just about to start writing a looong email basically along the
same lines as Anthony Doyle, when his message arrived. So all I can do
is confirm his method of doing things, with the only difference being
our implementation of what Anthony calls the Gateway. At first I was
looking at doing exactly what Middlesbrough has done, except that I
couldn't get the NLN tools, for creating an index, working. At the same
time an e-fair was hosted by Sunderland university, where the G6
Partnership showed off WISE OWL, which creates and index and provides a
web front-end to the NLN materials. This product works really well and I
would recommend it. It looks like you can now download it from
http://www.owl-elearning.ac.uk/elearning.php and you can view our
implementation of it at http://blackboard.newdur.ac.uk/wise.

Regards
Jannetta Lewis

====
New College Durham
Product Development Co-ordinator
X4434

"Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so."  (Ford Prefect)
"The difference between genius and stupidity is genius has its limits"
(Albert Einstein)

>>> [log in to unmask] 18/11/2004 13:02:42 >>>
We take a very different approach to providing access to the NLN
materials within Blackboard at Middlesbrough College.

I have produced a Gateway where we house the full collection of NLN
materials, from where they can be searched and then linked to within
Blackboard. We simply take the stance of linking to the materials
instead of actually uploading them each time we need to use them in a
course site.

At the moment this does not allow the materials built-in tracking and
grading to be transferred into the gradebook as you actually have to
upload the material using the SCROM / NLN player building block to
achieve this and it will not accept a URL as its input... BUT we have
found that what you actually get out of the materials in terms of
tracking and grades etc, is in most cases not worth the complexity of
downloading, uploading and the setting options within blackboard for
the
instructor. After all the assessments are formative anyway. We advise
our staff to use the materials as a learning aid and then produced a
quick blackboard test to test the understanding etc related to the
topic
of the NLN material.

Advantages of just linking to the material within Blackboard are:

- The saving of space, (if the material is used across multiple
courses,
only one copy from the gateway is used, no need to upload to each
course).
- It only takes two minutes to provide a URL link to the materials
from
the gateway saving the instructor valuable time.
- The materials can be inserted into Blackboard from home or outside
the
institution as you don't need to download the material and then upload
to Blackboard. Imagine trying to download and upload a NLN material
from
home on a dial up or even broadband. Most of our staff actually work
on
their courses from home also and build large chunks from home when
they
have the time free, this has been a huge benefit for us.

Since I introduced the Gateway into the college and provided the
solution to our staff we have seen a great adoption of the NLN
materials
within our institution with lots of staff using them within
Blackboard.

We have also provided this solution to a number of colleges throughout
the UK now and have updated it twice so far with the release of new
materials. It seems to be a good solution to provide access to the
materials within Blackboard.

If you want to take a look at our gateway here's the link, we'll be
restricting access soon to only Middlesbrough College people so check
it
out and drop me a line if you have any questions or comments:

http://media.mbro.ac.uk/nln

Cheers
Anthony Doyle
Middlesbrough College
[log in to unmask]


-----Original Message-----
From: Blackboard/Courseinfo userslist
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of John
Edmonstone
Sent: 18 November 2004 12:42
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Uploading NLN materials

Ellen

The only satisfactory way, if you are not on Enterprise edition, is
repackage the NLN objects using Reload (since LRN is no longer
supported
and
causes a bug in BB6.2) and then zip them up into BB. So you will still
have
to zip/unzip etc. The third generation of NLN materials need to be
repackaged before you can upload them since, as a sector, we asked for
them
in this disagreegateable format.

John Edmonstone
Cardonald College

-----Original Message-----
From: Ellen Lessner [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 18 November 2004 12:08
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Uploading NLN materials


Can anyone point me in the right direction for uploading NLN materials
easily onto Bb V6.  We're still having to zip/unzip etc and feel there
must
be an easier way.  If this has been answered elsewhere - sorry for
posting
again...


Many thanks
Ellen Lessner
ILT Development Coordinator
Abingdon and Witney College
01235 216276

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