This ‘Need-to-Know’ blog post series features noteworthy stories that speak of need-to-know developments within higher education and K-12 that have the potential to influence, challenge and/or transform traditional education as we know it.
Blackboard Launches ‘The New Learning Experience’
The vision will be brought to life through technology and services that are focused on the wants and needs of the learner; tightly integrated into connected and sensible workflows; packaged in a totally new, intuitive and delightful user experience; accessible, mobile and always-on; and layered with data and analytics capabilities. — Blackboard Press Release via PR NewsWire, July 21, 2015
‘Delightful’, ‘intuitive’ and ‘sensible’ are hardly words educators (or students) would associate with a learning management platform, yet according to Blackboard Inc. ‘The New Learning Experience’ of which the LMS Blackboard Learn platform is part, will be just that. Announced last week at the BbWorld 2015 event, the New Learning experience includes the re-designed Blackboard Learn platform, the new and improved Blackboard Collaborate, web conferencing platform and a new Bb Student App. Blackboard’s CEO, Jay Bhatt, in a keynote presentation, described the new learning experience as ‘student-focused’, ‘connected’ and outlined how it will ‘follow the student on their learning journey’ through K-12, Higher Ed and beyond. And, since Blackboard is the dominant platform in the U.S. LMS market, it’s likely that ‘the new learning experience’ may be coming to a campus near you.
LMS Data – Spring 2015 Updates [edutechnica.com/2015/03/08/lms-data-spring-2015-updates]
Blackboard CEO Jay Bhatt at #BbTLC15 presenting the ‘New Learning Experience’. Keynote extract – May 2015 [YouTube: youtu.be/E7FALEA7ACU]
- Blackboard Ultra and Other Product and Company Updates, July 25, 2015, Michael Feldstein, e-literate
- Reuters: Blackboard up for sale, seeking up to $3 billion in auction, July 28, 2015, Phil Hill
- Blackboard Unveils the New Learning Experience, July 21, 2015, PR Newswire
E-text books in Higher Ed — Low Adoption Rates Explained
Textbooks in most higher education courses are a key source of content for students. Yet the adoption rate of e-textbooks among students is low; on the surface puzzling given the high rates of device ownership among college students. EDUCAUSE published a paper earlier this month that explored e-textbook use in higher education, specifically student usage patterns, adoption rate, and the role of the instructor in e-textbook use. The report is helpful; the study used benchmark data gathered via an online survey in 2012 with undergraduate (n=809) and graduate (n=133) students and compared it to data gathered in 2014 using the same (and some additional) questions.
Surprising is the little difference between results from 2012 to 2014. The one significant difference is the awareness of e-textbook availability which went from 30% in 2012, unaware of e-textbook as an option, to 10% in 2014. Overall the findings suggest that lower cost is the driving factor for students’ decision to buy textbooks with convenience ranking second.
Figure 2: Factors influencing e-textbook adoption, 2012 – 2014 (deNoyelles, Raible, & Seilhamer, 2015)
Instructor use of the e-textbook is also factor in student use, third ranked behind cost and convenience. The study indicated that instructor annotations and embedding questions in the e-book (feature available within e-textbooks platforms) was a driver of student purchases of the e-text over print. Yet the overall the rate of instructors using e-textbooks was low in 2012, and lower still in 2014:
In 2012, 75 percent of participants claimed that instructors seldom or never used the features within the particular e-textbook. This rate remained low two years later, with 77 percent of participants reporting that their instructors seldom or never used the features of an e-textbook… Only around one-third of instructors acknowledged the e-textbook option in their syllabus … less than 30 percent of instructors actually modeled the use of the e-textbook. — Exploring Students’ E-Textbook Practices in Higher Education, July 6, 2015, EDUCAUSE
Insight: There are several barriers to e-textbook adoption and though EDUCAUSE’s paper suggests that instructor adoption is a significant factor, there are others—one not mentioned is the fact that college students as a demographic group don’t like to pay top dollar for digital content—they are used to getting content for free or for a minimal cost with monthly fee-based platforms such as Netflix for movies ($7.99/month) and Spotify for music ($4.99/month for students). This phenomenon makes the idea of investing a significant sum in an e-textbook inconsistent with this groups’ view of digital content; a physical textbook might be viewed more worthy of the significant investment. Secondly, what is mentioned in the paper is that most student-respondents didn’t use the interactive elements of the e-textbook, only 28%. The interactive elements are one of the primary benefits of the digital format—interactive features can provide additional and/or enhanced learning. The fact that students aren’t using these elements, whether due to availability, awareness or platform limitations, is significant barrier that once overcome will greatly improve adoption rates.
There are new developments in e-textbook platforms, one highlighted in The Chronicle of Higher Education (listed below).
- Exploring Students’ E-Textbook Practices in Higher Education, July 6, 2015, EDUCAUSE
- Web Platform Seeks to Give Students an Alternative to the ‘Wall of Text’, July 14, 2015, Meg Bernhard, The Chronicle of Higher Education
- ZyBooks
Nifty, New Ed-Tech Platform – Realtime Board
I’m a big fan of the digital white board platform, Padlet, which is an excellent tool for virtual team brainstorming sessions, back channel discussions during virtual meetings, or for team communication. Though it can be buggy especially when there are multiple users, which is why this new platform Realtime Board looks promising. It appears to be able to scale up to multiple users, can handle a variety of file formats, has an attractive interface, and is supported by multiple device platforms. The downside is that there is a fee for users, however there is a free licensing option for educators, click here for more details.
Below is an example of Realtime Board used for a Mind Map assignment.
Example of a Mind map using Realtime Board, [https://realtimeboard.com/examples/mind_map/]
Online Learning Insights 
What students WANT and NEED is real human support. Wiggling file folders and other cute graphics are not part of those wants and needs, and to adopt the language of human wants and needs while proposing a technological solution is just wrong. I shared my thoughts on the Blackboard hyperbole about its interface a while ago; the idea that anybody buys into this just blows my mind. Students want wiggling graphics: really? REALLY? Find me a student who says they want a wiggling file folder graphic (as opposed to, say, meaningful courses, compassionate teachers, etc.), and I’ll eat a manila file folder (a real one), every bit of it.
Like I said yesterday, technology is just a means that we PEOPLE can use to try to meet the wants and needs of other PEOPLE around us. Technology designers understandably get caught up in their products and think that we want the technology for its own sake. But we don’t. What we want and what we need is respect, time, freedom. Or, to borrow Pink’s mantra: autonomy, mastery, purpose. Note the absence of technology from that list. And wiggling graphics in particular.
I posted two ROFLMAO observations about the UI hype when I first started seeing the self-congratulatory Bb propaganda back in June:
https://plus.google.com/+LauraGibbs/posts/gSXk43geKAm
https://plus.google.com/+LauraGibbs/posts/7noeLRV7Uya
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Wow – ‘playful movement’, ‘minimizing anxiety’ — where does Blackboard get the people that write their content? I like Pink’s mantra — autonomy, mastery and purpose–this is language descriptive of how technology can support learning–emphasis on support given it’s the people: teachers, other educators and students that should be the focus.
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Yep, that’s why I call out the hype when I see it. We are so inundated with this propaganda around ed tech that I think we stop even noticing it. Student fear and anxiety is a HUGE obstacle to learning and something that should be a big topic for us to consider as we design our courses… because Blackboard will not save us from ourselves!
As you know, I think one good strategy for alleviating anxiety is LOLCats ha ha. I use a tech tool to make them, yes, but the LOLCats transcend technology. 🙂
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Love the LOL Cats — it’s also the instructor’s acknowledgement of student anxiety that makes a difference, whether it’s Cats or other vehicles to alleviate the anxiety, it’s the presence that makes a significant difference. Though I like LOL cats because of its universal appeal :).
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And what’s cool is that the students can make memes too (and they do!), and we’re using a tool like Cheezburger TOGETHER. I like reciprocal tools like that. The LMS, however, is not designed to be a reciprocal tool; the teacher makes all the important choices, and the students don’t even get to select their own color schemes, must less make substantive decisions about how they want to use the tool. But with Cheezburger, with blogs, with Pinterest, it’s just me and the students sharing spaces, sharing tools… and that sense of sharing also goes a long way to reducing anxiety (both the students AND my own too!). 🙂
[WordPress had a hiccup so I had to change to my Twitter profile]
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Ohh yes — I really like how you describe it as reciprocal — where learning is not driven by the teacher but is collective. 🙂
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