The training will be held from 8 a.m. to noon and from 1 to 3 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 19, and Thursday, Aug. 20, in DuSable Hall, Room 348, or by appointment Friday, Aug. 21 – call (815) 753-0172.

These seminars are open-ended and run continually so you won’t miss a thing no matter when you drop by. A complete demonstration with hands-on practice could take 30 minutes. If you cannot attend one of the above sessions, contact Keith Bisplinghoff at (815) 753-0172 for other training opportunities.

Some initial questions to get discussion started include:

• What does every online instructor need to know?
• What recently has worked really well in your online teaching?
• What recently have you tried that wasn’t as successful as you had hoped?
• What advice do you have for others who are considering teaching online for the first time?
• Any new tips, tricks, or tech that you’ve found and have implemented in your online teaching?

For more details and to register, visit http://www.niu.edu/facdev/programs/online

Please pass this info onto anyone at your campus who you think might be interested in participating. If there is enough interest, we could consider offering similar sessions in the future.

The new master course functionality, which had been previously available only by request, will allow you to:

• Combine enrollments of sections for which you’re the official instructor of record into a single “master” course in Blackboard.
• Manage the master course by adding or removing sections before the semester starts.

The tool can be accessed by logging in to Blackboard and following the ‘Blackboard Faculty Tools’ link under the Services tab.

To learn more about the new tool and/or to watch a 2 minute tutorial, please visit http://www.niu.edu/blackboard/gettingstarted/bft.shtml#mastercourse.

If you have any questions please contact the ITS Helpdesk at 815-753-8100 or helpdesk@niu.edu.

The Early Warning System is a Blackboard tool that can be used to monitor student progress in a course and alert faculty to possible performance problems among students. The tool can also be used to communicate those warnings to students themselves to let them know how their performance is being measured. Notification warnings can be generated based on a set of rules that take into account graded performance, late or missing course work, or attendance within the Blackboard course. For example, as shown on the picture below, a rule can be set up to generate a warning if there are any students in the course who scored below a certain percentage on a quiz or if some students have not logged in to the course for several days, or if students’ assignments are past due.

The Early Warning System can monitor student activity according to three types of rules that faculty can set up for their course:

• Grade Rule – This rule is based on the students’ grade for a particular assessment. It can be an automated Blackboard assessment such as a test, a survey, or a safe assignment, or a manually added assessment. Blackboard generates the warning notification based on the score entered into the Gradebook, whether the score is calculated automatically or entered manually.
• Due Date Rule – This rule generates warning notifications based on specified due dates for assessments that are created and graded through Blackboard. It cannot be applied to manually graded assessments.
• Last Access Rule – The last access rule generates a warning notification based on when students last accessed the Blackboard course.

Reviewing Alerts and Notifying Users

Once the Early Warning System rules have been created, faculty must check the Early Warning System periodically and click the Refresh button to discover incidents of student performance that trigger warning notifications. The Early Warning System does not continuously monitor the course; it must be done by the faculty.

The Early Warning System consolidates warning notifications based on the rules and allows faculty to easily address problems to students. Faculty can specify which notification warnings they want to communicate to students and they have control over the message each time a warning is sent. Faculty can use the default message generated by Blackboard or they can modify the message to more accurately communicate the seriousness of the situation.

As shown in the picture above, Blackboard maintains a Notification Log of all the Early Warning System messages that have been sent to students in the course. The Notification Log, which lists statistics by individual student, is searchable and can be used to verify that a student was alerted to a problem.

The Early Warning System is a helpful feature in Blackboard that allows faculty to monitor student performance proactively based on attendance, student assessment, and assessment due dates. The Early Warning System is an extension of the Blackboard Performance Dashboard and is closely integrated with it. The link to the Early Warning System page can be found in the course Control Panel under Assessment; it also appears as a column in the Performance Dashboard.

For more information on how to create and apply Early Warning System rules in a Blackboard course please refer to the documentation page found at: http://www.niu.edu/blackboard/assessments/earlywarning.shtml

Upcoming MyNIU-Entering Final Grades Open Labs faculty sessions:

• May 4, 2009 from 1:00 until 4:00 in Founders Library 297
• May 5, 2009 from 8:30 until 11:30 in Founders Library 297

These sessions are come and go – come for 5 minutes or stay for longer to learn about entering final grades into MyNIU. The ERP Training team will be available to demonstrate the entering grades process and answer any questions.

Help with Entering Final Grades is located on the MyNIU Training website at http://www.niu.edu/myniutraining/training/self_service_tutorial.shtml. Select the Job Aid link to see a printable version of Entering Final Grades or the SeeIt! link to see a video-like format.

Please view the MyNIU training calendar to see a complete listing of MyNIU training classes. Go to: http://www.niucalendar.niu.edu/EAS/Caldirect.aspx?cal=228&view=month

Teaching Effectiveness Institute: Fundamental Principles of Effective Instruction will be offered on Thursday, August 13, 2009 from 8:00 am to 4:00 pm. Day one of the institute is geared toward an audience who is new to teaching and to those wanting to refresh their knowledge about teaching fundamentals.

Teaching Effectiveness Institute: “Raising the Bar: Lower Expectations and Higher Learning,” by Connie Staley, Ph.D. (University of Colorado, Colorado Springs) will be offered on Friday, August 14, 2009 from 8:00 am to 4:00 pm. The workshop is open for faculty and staff, and will explore complex issues, such as what can those of us who value higher learning do to help students with lower expectations dig in and grapple with the challenge, and how we can raise the bar, This workshop will also generate innovative teaching strategies to counteract the issues. For more details and to register online, visit http://www.facdev.niu.edu or email facdev@niu.edu.

The new features in Blackboard 7.3 primarily can be found in three main toolsets: Discussion Board, Assessment and Gradebook, and the Visual Text Box Editor. In addition, the new Early Warning System tool in Blackboard can be used to monitor student progress and alert faculty to possible performance problems.

For more details regarding the new features and tools in Blackboard 7.3, visit http://www.niu.edu/blackboard/resources/version73.shtml

The Faculty Development and Instructional Design Center offers a wide array of programs each month regarding the principles and practices of teaching with Blackboard. The current Blackboard program schedule and online registration information is always available at http://www.niu.edu/blackboard/workshops