Presentation from ASTRO Session at BbWorld09

1. Evaluating Blackboard Use on Your Campus
A review of the "Project ASTRO" Greenhouse Grant
Eric Kunnen
Coordinator of Instructional Technologies
Grand Rapids Community College
ekunnen@grcc.edu
Santo Nucifora
Manager of Systems Development and Innovation
Seneca College
santo.nucifora@senecac.on.ca

2. Overview
• Evaluating Blackboard Use on Your Campus
A review of the "Project ASTRO" Greenhouse Grant -
Session Description:
– Collecting and reporting on system activity information from
Blackboard is often a challenge. Come and learn how to easily
access reports on how Blackboard is being used by faculty, staff,
and students which will help you: inform stakeholders, improve the
engagement of end users, increase adoption, and to encourage
deeper use of Blackboard by faculty, staff, and students.
• Key Functions of Project ASTRO:
– Tracking
Automatic tracking (via Building Block) of courses, organizations,
users, and tools.
– Reporting
Easy point and click access to advanced reports.
– Discovery
Ability to measure trends and analyze usage.
– Sharing
Inform key stakeholders of usage levels.
– Acting
Identify, target, and engage users using reports.

3. Agenda
• Why Reporting?
• Gathering System Reports
• Quick Overview of Greenhouse Grant
• Getting Started with ASTRO
• Live Demo & Example Use Cases
• Comments / Questions

4. Why Reporting?
– How many faculty and students are using Bb?
– What tools are used in our system?
– How can we improve and promote new tools?
– Who do we need to communicate with for the next
upgrade?
– Who are our innovative faculty?
– How does faculty use compare to student use?
– Which departments are using Bb and to what degree?
– How can we use these data to encourage deeper use
and create awareness of Bb?
– What is the impact of Bb in teaching and learning?

5. The Potential of Reporting
• Usage Statistics – Ability to monitor and better determine which parts of
the system are the most frequently used and less frequently used, thereby
providing targeted promotion and training of specific tools or features that
would benefit both faculty and students. (Student/Faculty Engagement,
Adoption, Retention, and Satisfaction)
• Accountability – Ability to provide metrics and trend data that can be
obtained from the system to determine accurate statistics on usage for
stakeholders requiring data-driven decisions and measures. (Department
Action Plans, Continuous Quality Improvement)
• Planning - Data obtained will enable institutions to better prepare and
optimize system configuration, change management, manage upgrades,
monitor performance, rolling out new tools, communication of issues, and
investigate infrastructure hardware purchases for future growth. (Upgrade
Management and System Growth)
• Return on Investment - Data gathered can help determine and allow for
the maximization of Blackboard use by faculty, staff, and students. (ROI and
Accountability)

6. Gathering System Reports
• Built-In Standard System Reports
• Built-In Advanced Report Templates
• Google Analytics
• Quick Polls
• Surveys
• Who’s Online
• Course Statistics
• Custom Scripts
• …

7. Quick Overview of Greenhouse Grant
• Goal - To build a community based advanced reporting
tool and Blackboard Building Block that will empower
institutions to become more accountable and able to use
data-driven decision making to enhance, optimize, and
advance Blackboard Academic Suite usage in teaching
and learning.
• Awarded in 2007
• Code Name = Project ASTRO

8. Project ASTRO – Timeline
February 2007
Proposal Submitted
July 2007
November 2007 Awarded at BbWorld
Requirements,
Scanning, USF (Glen
Parker)
December 2007 Conference
April 2008 Call Bb and UMBC (John
Face to Face Meeting Fritz)
at Seneca, Listserv
July 2008 June 2008
Project Update, Survey - James Cook
Poster Session, HTML University, Australia
Mockup (Anne A’Herran)
June 2009
Face to Face Meeting July 2009
at Seneca Beta Available at
BbWorld09

9. Getting Started with Project ASTRO
• Building Block Installation
• Configuration Wizard
– Reporting Periods
– Departments
– Sub-Departments
– Active Course Definition
• Initial Data Gathering Task
• Cleanup

10. Live Demo and Example Use Cases

11. Screen Capture Demo

12. Dashboard
• At a Glance
Views
• Active vs Inactive
Courses including
Departments
• Top Courses and
Organizations for
Week
• Top Tools Used
by Instructors and
Students
• Top Portal
Modules Used

13. Active Courses
• Department vs Sub Department
• Courses, Percentage, Instructors, Students
• Semester Trends

14. Active Instructors & Students
• Percentage and Trends

15. Activity in Active Courses
• Page Views (Hits) by Instructor and Student
• Courses with Page Views vs Total Page Views
• Break Down by Day, Week, Month, All

16. Top Week Tool Page Views
• Student vs Instructor

17. Course Tool Page Views
• Tool Page Views (including Building Blocks)
• Trends, Course, Instructor, Student Comparison

18. Course Tool Items
• Building Block Tool Tracking
• Drill Down by Courses and Instructor Using Tools
• Trends

19. Activity By Course

20. Activity by User

21. Project ASTRO – Next Steps
• Continue Beta – Extend and Expand Application with
Community
• Release to Open Source?
• Blackboard CommunityLINK Potential? – Build an
online repository of report data that can be populated by
the ASTRO Blackboard Building Block to allow
institutions to do benchmarking, promote collaboration,
information exchange, and sharing of best practices.

22. Comments / Questions

23. University of South Florida
Thank You! * Grinnell College
Wayne State University
Teesside University
• Blackboard Inc. Durham University
* Grand Rapids Community College
• Institutions requested Beta * Seneca College
• ASTRO Listserv Members Calvin College
Palomar College
• ASU Listserv Members University of Melbourne
Doncaster College
University of Derby
Fayetteville State University
Virginia Community Colleges
University of Tennessee at
Chattanooga
Sheffield Hallam University
Princeton
ROC Midden Nederland
University of Oregon
Northwestern University
University of South Carolina

24. More Information
• Web
– http://projects.oscelot.org/gf/project/astro/
• Listserv
– http://listserv.uic.edu/archives/astro.html
• Email
– Eric Kunnen
Coordinator of Instructional Technologies
Grand Rapids Community College
ekunnen@grcc.edu
– Santo Nucifora
Manager of Systems Development and Innovation
Seneca College
santo.nucifora@senecac.on.ca