Individual perspective

A WORM'S EYE VIEW OF THE BLACKBOARD SYSTEM

Dr Robin Dix (duologue project team-member)

One of the most famous depressives in history, the Preacher in Ecclesiastes, lamented that "Of making many books there is no end"; but it's tempting to think that a brief spell in a modern British university might have cheered him up a bit. Many books? There seems to be no time to make even one. But it's not fair to blame teaching for this lack of time, because all too often there seems to be insufficient time for teaching, too. I increasingly find that I'm having to teach books which I haven't read for years, because I simply can't re-read everything that I'm now expected to teach. And it's not just that I'm getting lazy: I'm working more hours per week than I've ever worked before.

It's a serious matter, this - knowing that you're not teaching to the best of your ability diminishes your satisfaction in the job, which diminishes your morale, and then you get into a downward spiral. So: what initially attracted me to join Durham's duologue project team funded by the English Subject Centre to explore the potential of the Blackboard system for English teaching, was the promise it offered of saving time. If it took some of the administrative chores out of teaching, and left more time for teaching (and proper preparation) itself, that had to be a plus, as far as I was concerned.

And on this, Blackboard has kept its promise. It has saved me time. The initial, get-you-started training took 2 hours, and over the course of a single academic year, it's saved me a lot more than that.

I came to Blackboard as a complete novice: a year ago, I didn't even know what a Virtual Learning Environment was. I still operate at a fairly basic level with it: the team leader for the duologue project at Durham is the wiz at it in our department, and will provide the overview; what I'm aiming to do is rather to provide the worm's eye view. I'll outline the benefits I've found in Blackboard, even though I've been operating at a most basic level. I'll then close with some caveats for those who might be thinking of introducing a similar system in their departments.

• It really does save time: for example, in emailing groups; posting lecture handouts and reading lists; making announcements

• Convenient for students

• Teaching materials accessible to colleagues teaching the same course

And now for the caveats:

• Technophobic hostility [but similar hostility to email has now melted away given in the face of its overwhelming advantages]

• Equality of provision:

(a) student demand will lead to pressure for all Blackboard users to be as proficient as the best. [A difficulty not restricted to Blackboard - some staff excel at lecturing, others at essay annotation. Uniformity can only be achieved by having teaching done be robots. By and large, students don't want this. So it's a question of swings and roundabouts.]

(b) unfairness, real or perceived. [Blackboard's distance learning facility could enable lecturers who use Blackboard to give their students more contact time than is scheduled by departments, and hence lead to complaints, or even appeals, by those who felt themselves disadvantaged by having a tutor who does not use Blackboard. The only solution, if distance learning slots are not factored in to official contact hours at a departmental level, is for staff using Blackboard not to avail themselves of this facility.]

• Visibility of errors, omissions etc in teaching materials to other staff, and to teaching quality assessors (the flip side of Advantage 3). [Those managing modules on Blackboard need to be aware of colleagues' sensitivities and vulnerabilities, and make it clear that material submitted to them for posting on Blackboard will not be "taken down and used in evidence against them."]