Bb World 2008

At today's Blackboard World 2008 user conference I will be presenting on "If you build it will they come? Developing an e-Learning Commons." The presentation will make no claim to having all the answers to developing an e-Learning Commons, or indeed even a community. Rather, it is my hope that it will be the beginnings of a conversation on effective ways to develop a Commons.

NAU is not unique in our work with a Commons. At the poster session yesterday evening I was interested to see others that are working in this direction. Three that stood out for me were:

• Learning styles and Blackboard: Using one to help enhance the other. Jacob M. Guerra, South Texas College.
• Vista communities: Beyond the academic classroom. Laura J. Sederberg, CSU Chico.

The first two of these support some of what we are learning at NAU:

• When looking to develop online communities, focus first on the content. For example, at CSU Chico, Laura Sederberg is working with various faculty and student communities (departments, general education committees, etc.) to deliver resources and interactive components where faculty can share and discuss. Jacob Guerra is also delivering examples of how learning styles can help in the development of course content and activities.
• Ensure that interaction is a key component of the community. But, here is where we come up against the issue of a busy target audience, and how it may or may not be possible to get them involved in not only sharing or developing resources, but how to interact about these resources. Sederberg noted that faculty engagement is only really beginning at her campus, about a year after her initial work. Guerra noted that he had more people checking things out (ie. logging in to look at his examples and other resources) than actually interacting. I've heard similar comments elsewhere, including at the January 2008 Educause Learning Initiative conference in San Antonio. And, certainly, this reflects our current experience at NAU with our pilot.
  

I was also interested in the interface presented by Paul Durston, Blackblog: Encouraging students to write for reflection, University of Teeside. I'll be going back to NAU to talk with our e-Learning Center's creative design team on ways to build a more interesting interface based on the graphics that was in this poster. They have an image of a common room that allows those coming into it to chose what they want to access, including the library resources, discussion rooms, etc. The poster was a static image, but I want to follow up to see if the actual live image is more dynamic (a la Second Life).