Student engagement has become a high priority for many Higher Education Institutions with a wide variety of activities being adopted to encourage student participation and contribution. At the University of Worcester decisions on how Blackboard should be implemented and developed have traditionally been made by the central Learning Technology Team with input from academic staff, however feedback during a strategic conversation as part of the Changing the Learning Landscape programme highlighted a range of issues from the student perspective and prompted the initiation of a student partnership project to investigate student views on the use of Blackboard and seek feedback on potential improvement. This session will present the project findings and report on the resulting actions. Participants will also be invited to discuss similar initiatives and further developments in student engagement in the field of learning technology.

1. Giving students a voice in
Blackboard policy and practice
development
Elizabeth Symonds
Team Leader – Learning and Teaching
Technology Unit
University of Worcester1

2. Background
• Changing the Learning Landscape programme
• Strategic conversation with students highlighted inconsistency
in the use of Blackboard across and within Academic Institutes
• Two SAP projects carried out to evaluate student opinions on
the use of Blackboard
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3. Qualitative research – Institute of Health
• Focus groups for students run by students
• 6 focus groups across a range of subject areas
• Used examples of Blackboard sites to promote discussion on
what worked and what didn’t
• Used thematic framework analysis to draw out key themes
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4. Key themes identified
• Content
• Organisation and structure
• Navigation
• Personalisation and mobile access
• Timeliness
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5. Content
• “Some lecturers seem to be more consistent than others”
• “lot of information… when you first start it was quite difficult to
see where everything was on the homepage… a lot of that
information wasn’t really relevant”
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6. Organisation and Structure
• “…folder inside folder inside folder so that you’re clicking 30
times before you’re getting to the document you want”
• “organised into different categories… I think I’ve seen some
lecturers who do it amazingly – I don’t need to sort of faff”
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7. Navigation
• “I really like how all the different modules have their own
section and each semester is also broken down further – really
allows me to find the relevant information I am looking for”
• “I hate having to look through every single folder and
subheading to try and find the lecture or relevant bit of
information then it turning out the lecturer hasn’t even put it
up”
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8. Personalisation and mobile access
• “opportunity to change it – I’d like to be able to hide my old
modules”
• “the Blackboard app is really good - it gives me notifications so
instead of having to log into my uni portal, or go through the
student page, open Blackboard and then look, actually I just
get, it flashes up on my screen and I can go straight to it.”
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9. Timeliness
• “Best lecturer in my first year gave us the PowerPoint slides
along with quizzes and additional resources to test yourself
before and after the lecture and additional reading around the
subject”
• “Resources are put on after the lecture which doesn’t help me
as I would rather print off the slides and use in the lecture”
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10. Quantitative Research – Dr Duncan Westbury
• Student evaluators scored Blackboard sites against a range of
criteria
• An index of site complexity was calculated
• Course reports showed time students spent in the course
• Students’ final grade recorded
• Questionnaire to ascertain the importance of Blackboard to
students
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11. Findings
• Significant positive correlation between site quality and
average time students spent on site
• Significant relationship between site quality and student
performance
• Students completing the questionnaire believed that
Blackboard enhanced their learning
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12. Conclusion
• Much of the feedback from students was positive
• Consistency was a key issue across all groups
• Consistency and structure are fundamental to student usability
of Blackboard
• The potential for Blackboard as a learning tool is strongly
influenced by the quality, relevance and importance of material
made available
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13. Outcomes
• Completely revised help materials for students
• A revised module template based on student feedback is being
applied to all modules from September 2015
• A set of threshold standards drawn up based on the course
template providing in-built help materials to support staff
• Presentations delivered to all academic institutes promoting
and explaining the rationale for introducing standards
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14. University of Worcester Baseline Standards
• Link to standards
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15. Thanks for listening
• Any questions?
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