My Courses Module - Features and Components

The My Courses Module allows you to go to the homepage of a specific course. On this Course homepage, their are numerous components and features, most of which are listed in the vertical navigational bar at the left margin of the page (Figure 18). These components usually include the following:

• Announcements
• Course Information
• Staff Information
• Course Documents
• Assignments
• Communication
• Discussion Board
• External Links
• Tools

To further confuse things, there is also a list of Tools directly below this list that includes more items:

• Communication
• Course Tools
• Course Map
• Refresh
• Detail View

Figure 18 - Features and Components

The Announcements feature here works well - an expand and collapse feature could be added to the individual announcements to respond to long announcements, but other than that, it works well.

Figure 19 - Announcements - Rating 8.5

The Course Information feature is used infrequently by Faculty; however, when it is used, it is basically a useful feature.

Figure 20 - Course Information - 9.5

Staff Information - I have never had a course where the Instructor used the Staff Information feature; however, I can imagine that it might be helpful to see an Instructor's resume, in part as an example for grad students to use in building their own.

Course Documents, Readings, and Assignments. For some courses these features are distinct, and for others they are all lumped together. At any rate, this is one of the most effective parts about Blackboard. Faculty frequently load electronic versions of reading assignments to Blackboard and make them much more readily available than the old days when articles were put on reserve in the library. It is always handy to be able to access an electronic syllabus of the class when you just can't find that hard copy. I would have to rate this feature as a 10.

Figure 21 - Sample Course Documents Page - Feature Rating - 10

Figure 22 - Sample Readings Page - Feature Rating - 10

External Links - None of my professors have used this feature yet, however, it seems to be a nice feature with a lot of potential. Another related feature that would be nice to see added would be to allow students to bookmark sites and store their bookmarks in Blackboard.

There are three remaining features in the top part of this section: Communication, Discussion Board, and Tools.

There is also a lower part of this section under the heading Tools, which includes Communication, Course Tools, and Course Map.

That makes for a lot of Communication and a lot of Tools as shown in Figure 23.

Figure 23 - A Lot of Communication and Tools

In the case of Communication, both of the communication listings link to the same page (Figure 24).

Figure 24 - Communications Page

Both of the Tools links also connect to the same page (Figure 25).

Figure 25 - Tools Page

This duplication is unnecessary and leads to confusion - one of the extra sets of links could be eliminated.

Another duplication occurs with the Course Map and the Detail View. The Course Map opens a new pop-up window with an expandable view of the feature links. The Detail view performs a similar function in the original window (Figure 26).

Figure 26 - Detail View

Since the Course Map opens in a new window, it is less practical to use than the Detail View and could be eliminated.

The Refresh feature does not seem to be any different from the refresh feature on you browser, and as such, could also be eliminated.

Since the Communication and the Course Tools feature are so complex, I will discuss them in separate blog entries.