Course Management System (Online@UT)
Scenario, Steps 1 + 2
Scenario
Every fall, David teaches Marketing 300, a popular course among business majors and minors. Because it is a large, lecture-style course that also requires students to work together on group projects, David has, over the last few years, moved most of his materials into an ever-evolving Blackboard course site. He has also learned to take full advantage of Blackboard’s Group and Communication features. David’s goal for this semester is to use Adaptive Release to reinforce fundamental concepts of marketing.Step 1
David always spends the first four weeks of the semester reviewing business fundamentals. In recent years, he has been forced to devote an increasing amount of class time during the latter part of the semester to reviewing those fundamentals again because of the growing number of students who didn’t master them the first time. He now uses Adaptive Release to force students to demonstrate mastery of the fundamentals before they are allowed to move on to more advanced projects.
David begins by creating a “Fundamentals” Content Area in his Blackboard course site. There he stores his lecture notes, PowerPoint Presentations, Readings (including an online glossary), and Assignments.
Step 2
David uses Adaptive Release to control the flow of content here. Most importantly, he has built the Content Area so that the required Fundamentals Quiz will only be accessible after students have read all of the lesson materials.
To do this, he first uploads all of his course materials into their respective folders. The process for doing so has not changed. For example, in order to place his “Introduction” document into the Lecture Notes subfolder, he opens Lecture Notes from within the Control Panel and clicks the “Add Item” button.
He then enters the appropriate data into the standard “Add Item” screen and clicks the Submit button. Only then does he notice a difference in the Blackboard interface. Now, in addition to the Modify, Copy, and Remove buttons, there is also an option to Manage the item.
