Maximizing Blackboard: Learning Integrations

By: Ed Finn, Executive Director

Blackboard is a complex system that interfaces with other campus technologies to help support the faculty and student experience. However, not all of these integrations are apparent or used by faculty as they design and create courses. That is where CITAL comes in. In this blog post, we will examine some of the tools available and provide resources for faculty to better integrate teaching and learning technologies into their Blackboard sites.

Integration can mean many things. It may just be a link to an external tool you use to deliver content or embedding a video in a content page. However, it could also mean tying external content, assessments, or tools directly into the Blackboard gradebook. More importantly, CITAL can help you realize your specific goals and vision for your courses. Partnering with us provides a sounding board for things you may have always wanted to do in class or online but did not realize were already possible. We will discuss a few ways of making your course site more of a hub of student engagement and provide you with some useful links.

Student Engagement

Faculty are constantly looking for new ways to engage students in and out of the classroom. Have you ever wanted to hold an impromptu group meeting, upload and share a video or ask students for real-time feedback in class or through interactive online polling? If so, there is probably a software for that. What’s more, it is likely that it already integrates with Blackboard. Below are a few examples:

Software	Description	Info Link
Zoom	A Zoom link is already provided in each course menu and can be accessed by clicking in the left navigation. Both faculty and students will be automatically signed in through Blackboard to participate in Zoom sessions.	Zoom Article
Top Hat	Top Hat provides a way to engage students in real-time feedback, while also encouraging active learning in and out of the classroom. Think of “clickers” and other audience response systems with far more functionality. You can integrate this directly into Blackboard, including linking it to the gradebook.	Top Hat Article
Blackboard Mashup	Blackboard provides a “Mashup” tool that allows you to embed images, presentations, and videos from various services (Flickr, SlideShare, and YouTube). This allows instructors to add attachments to media and can be added to any content area.	Blackboard Mashup Instructions
ScreenPal	ScreenPal (formerly Screencast-O-Matic) allows faculty and students to create, edit, and publish video and other multimedia content. Faculty are also able to create assignments or embed videos directly into Blackboard.	ScreenPal Tutorials

Publisher Resources

Publishers have many resources that can be integrated directly with Blackboard. In most cases, these integrations already exist and just need to be set up in a particular course. Everything from exercises and activities to assessments, case studies, and scenarios are available for integration. If you would like to have these set up in your courses, please reach out to the CITAL Helpdesk. Below is a list of some of the available integrations:

Some Parting Thoughts

The options mentioned above are in addition to integrations with Colleague, CourseEval, Simple Syllabus, and other, more administrative, systems. Whether you are looking to bring in new content to your course, tie in tools you already use, or explore new options for teaching, there are a tremendous number of options available. If there are other platforms or tools you use on a regular basis, CITAL can help you find ways to integrate, or at least link, them into the Blackboard experience for students. Doing so helps students find information more quickly and can reduce grading through gradebook integration with many external software providers.