The Instructional Design Portfolio

The Blackboard Course Makeover of Ethics and the Media By Craig Gerdes and Peggy Kuhr

F our years after Blackboard was adopted at the University of Kansas (KU), the Instructional Development and Support (ID S) un it wanted to assess

faculty use of the courseware and then design an approach to encourage more innovation in its use. The resulting partnership project, implemented in spring semester 2004, received such praise from faculty and students that IDS staff will expand their work in this area in the future.

Background In spring 2003, the In-

structional Development and Support (IDS) unit at the University of Kansas (KU) re- viewed 893 Blackboard cours- es and randomly surveyed 150 instructors. IDS wanted to determine how faculty mem- bers were using (or not using) Blackboard, what tools and features they were using spe- cifically and why, and what the resulting impact was on student learning.

The response told us that Blackboard was being used extensively to post docu- ments, pictures, graphics, web site links, videos, assign- ments and other informa- tion. In fact, posting ma-

Figure 1. Features and tools of BlackBoard used by KU faculty surveyed

terials was the most widely used tool/feature selected Figure 2. Type of instructional activities done by KU faculty using Blackboard

among the respondents (97%). This was an encouraging sign because it indicated that faculty individually and the university collectively had reached a level of comfort with the most basic function in Blackboard. The studies also re-

vealed, however, that very few faculty members used the more advanced tools and features of Blackboard, including com- munication (22%) and assessment (32%). See Figure 1.

We were also able to learn that 68% of the responding faculty who use Blackboard said they access it two or more times per week, and that nearly 77% of them had been

using Blackboard for at least one semester. Respondents further indicated that they were motivated to use Blackboard because they saw it as a vehicle to improve student learning (75%) and to enhance their own teaching and technology skills (63%). At the same time, they said the primary barrier to even greater adoption of Blackboard tools and features was a lack of time (61%). A close second was the lack of technical expertise. Most, however, indicated a desire to learn how to use Blackboard more effectively to enhance their courses, specifically in the area of incorporating instructional activities that increase the interactivity of student to student, student to instructor and student to content. See Figure 2.

As a result of the infor- mation gathered, IDS wanted to answer this question: How can we encourage more innovative use of Blackboard and other software applications in order to develop exemplary web-enhanced courses that will ultimately lead to improved

Volume 48, Number .5 TechTrends 71

student learning? In specific terms, the challenge was really how to encourage more interactive content and activities and more communication and assessment usage.

Using the theme from a popular television program, IDS decided to offer KU faculty an "Extreme Makeover" for their Blackboard sites. During spring 2004, IDS invited KU faculty to apply for a "Blackboard Course Make-Over" - - a personalized, private, course site review and redesign. Several instructors volunteered and five were selected for this pilot project to beef up their Blackboard courses with more in- teractive content activities and greater communication and assessment usage.

The entire process was coordinated by two instructional designers who met with participating faculty regularly, usually weekly, throughout the semester. The skills of other academic support professionals, including video producers, software trainers and librarians, were also called upon as necessary to complete the project by providing technical support, production services or academic guidance. In the end, IDS helped with many production aspects, including developing interactive materials, loading test questions into pools and creating short video clips to integrate into the course

Figure 3. Journalism course site before and after the makeover.

site. Ultimately, each course was reviewed in the "before" stage, documented as it underwent various procedures, and revealed - - the "after" stage - - in its new format.

One course that particularly benefited from a makeover was a Journalism 608 class, Ethics and the Media, taught by Professor Peggy Kuhr. In her application she indicated a strong desire to add more interactivity and move beyond simply posting content files. She was particularly interested in adding video elements, discussion opportunities and exercises or games that could be easily adapted to the "news of the day." Several initiatives were accomplished to meet these objectives.

Encourage online discussion Because Kuhr was not teaching J608 in spring 2004, we

assembled a focus group of seven former students to help gather information, generate additional ideas and review the end products. Their comments were collected on a discussion board both during and after the process.

Two permanent discussion boards were created. One, titled "Ethics Antenna," is intended to make students more aware of the many media ethical dilemmas that arise every day. Essentially, students will be asked to find and post articles, web sites, photographs and advertisements that illustrate possible ethical questions. The second discussion board is called "Life in the Real World" and will allow current students to interact with recent graduates and professionals

in the field about recent ethical dilemmas and appropriate problem-solving strategies.

Provoke quick response to ethics issues in the news

The instructor wanted an easy way to create and deploy weekly Ethics Polls based on current media events. The Instructional Designer introduced her to a web-based application called PollMonkey ( h t t p : / / w w w . p o l l m o n k e y . com/home.asp). A poll can easily be added, along with a photograph or additional links if needed, directly into an Announcement within Blackboard. The primary advantage of using this method

Figure 4. Sample Ethics Poll over the survey function found inside Blackboard is that

students are able to view the accumulated results of other respondents' answers.

Extend dassroom learning, particularly with emotional material

Visual images often provoke strong reactions, so photographs in news and advertising campaigns can pose important ethical challenges - - and have enormous consequences on media credibility. The instructor wanted students to spend more time considering such images.

�9 First, the instructor's collection of news photographs that pose ethical questions was scanned to digital format and uploaded to Blackboard to create a picture library. Next, the instructor developed a prototype lesson on a troubling question in photojournalism: pictures that include dead bodies. A narrated slide show was developed that showed several current images in the news, the ethical dilemmas they posed

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Exceptions to the Rtfle

�9 The person isn't identifiable

�9 The news is so important it outweighs other values.

- The image is so powerful it becomes an icon for the day.

Figure 5. Powerpoint slide show sample

and ultimately the decisions that various news organizations made. Impatica for PowerPoint (http:// impatica.com/imp4ppt/) was used to compress the PowerPoint file to a more manageable size for viewing

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ftte Newsweek picture poses an addi~onallsst~e ]'ne woman, who is dead is ~denl~ab~e Many p~mt news olgan~z'alions hme a general rote: Do ~ot lun p~ctures o! desd bodies So there ~s ~ho vslue of pm~cy [o co~sideL her NWa c,/

Figure 6. Sample comprehension question for case study

within Blackboard and over the Web. Students will be asked to use a discussion board to follow-up and share their own viewpoints and impressions.

P r o v i d e i n t e r a c t i v e r e a d i n g exerc i se s

Case studies are used extensively in the course to demonstrate important concepts. However, such exercises can become tedious for students and textbook chapters, while important, are often not compelling. SoftChalk LessonBuilder (http://softchalk.com/lessonbuilder.html) was used to create interactive reading exercises complete with text poppers for definitions and additional information, web site links, photographs and comprehension questions embedded throughout. At the end of a lesson, students can see a score indicating how well they answered the questions.

C a p t u r e s t u d e n t j o u r n a l i s t s ' o w n experiences

Journalism students working at the student newspaper, The University Daily Kansan, face a variety of ethical issues every day in their jobs. Four students were interviewed and videotaped speaking about specific ethical problems they'd run into. The interviews were then edited into smaller segments and delivered though Blackboard using a streaming server and in conjunction with the SoftChalk LessonBuilder application. For some assignments, students will be asked to watch the videos in two sittings. In the first,

they will be exposed to the ethical dilemma and then they will use a discussion board to describe what they would do in a similar situation. Finally, they will watch additional videos where the students explain what actually happened.

Rest~irt j

A D E C I S I O N F O R C O L U M N I S T D I C K J O N E S

F~e weeks later, your bca! news columnist gets a tip. The caller , who refuses to identEy himself, says that a similar incident had happened again, and at the same deeJership, What should J o ~ s do?

Go! I Choice l-Ignore the tip. lf's an anonymous call and he has plenty of other cst~mn ideas.

Got ~Ch~ice2`Tumthe~p~Vert~thec~ud$mp~te~*sincethatrep~derc~v~redtheRandySmithtrist Go! ] Choice 3-Make a few phone calls to see if the tipster is correct,

Figure Z Sample decision point from interactive case study

Offer an o n l i n e d e c i s i o n - m a k i n g "game"

Quandry (http://www.halfoakedsoftware.com/) is a program that creates Web-based Action Mazes - - interactive case studies. In this game, the user is presented with a situation and a number of choices. Upon choosing one of the options, the user sees the results and then must face a new set of options. Because the ethics course focuses on making good ethical decisions, students need extensive practice. This software can mimic the array of decisions that a journalist must face - and then give students instant feedback about the consequences of the choices they make.

At the conclusion of the project Professor Kuhr made the following statements:

"l liked the creative collaboration. I had visions of what might be possible and IDS Staff, especially Craig Gerdes, took those ideas and helped me get there. They also had some great suggestions of things to try."

"My Blackboard course is significantly better. I think the students will respond positively to the new ways information is presented and the interactivity of the lessons."

Students in the focus group also had positive comments about the improved course site and said the new activities including polls, discussions, slide shows and games, made the content more interesting and relevant. The course will be offered for the first time in its new format to students during fall 2004.

By the end of spring semester, IDS felt the "Blackboard Course Make-over" was an innovative and successful proiect for several reasons. First, instructors were more willing than previously to experiment with new Blackboard tools, including communication and assessment features. This could be because the partnership with IDS allowed them to work in the privacy of their own offices. An "expert" was always available for assistance, which could have made the instructors more enterprising as well. Second, instructors were more willing to explore other software to be used within Blackboard to enhance content delivery and create more interactive exercises and activities. This was possible because of the unique partnership agreement that was established, and because initial production work was completed by IDS

Volume 48, Number 5 TechTrends 73

staff. Both of these factors helped eliminate the potential barriers of limited time and limited technical expertise.

While we believe each course that received a makeover is "new and improved," IDS and the faculty are anxious to see the resulting learning benefits once the course is offered to students for the first time with its new "look" As a result of the positive comments from the faculty participants, we plan to continue offering this partnership program in future semesters.

Craig Gerdes is an instructional designer at the University of Kansas. His ma- jor responsibilities include faculty consultation and training, program design and evaluation, and resource development. He has a master's degree in adult, occupational and continuing education and is a certifed online instructor. He has worked in education for over 15 years and in the educational technol- ogy field for five years at both the K-12 and higher education levels.

Peggy Kuhr is the Knight Chair in Community Journalism for the journal- ism school at the University of Kansas. Before moving to KU in August 2002, she was managing editor for content at The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Wash. Professor Kuhr has also worked at The Hartford Courant (Hartford, Conn.) and the Great Falls Tribune (Great Falls, Mont.). Peggy has a mas- ter's degree in organizational leadership from Gonzaga University and an undergraduate degree from the University of Montana.

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