Faculty Spotlight
May - June 2005: Dr. Jennifer Franklin
A Steady Learning Pace
Today, she feels that many of the bugs have been worked out of the more problematic classroom technology. It has grown more intuitive and less likely to let her down.At the same time, she believes that her earlier technological successes – mastering the digital camera, for instance – have enabled her to keep up a steady learning pace and reduce common tech-related frustrations.
She was familiar with Blackboard when she arrived here, and she sees it as an integral part of her teaching. “I use Blackboard for all my courses,” she says. She describes the critical ten-minute window between classes: “I always spend the time answering student questions. Now that I have the handouts in Blackboard, the questions are actually about class content – not make-up quizzes and syllabus materials.”
While she began using Blackboard as a way to make documents continuously available to students, she’s experimented with some of the other features – with mixed results. It seems that forestry students didn’t have much of an interest in the discussion board; they also never felt the need to leave comments in an anonymous digital dropbox. She’s still glad she explored the options. She wants to give her students every opportunity to speak up.