Marshall has been a partner with Blackboard since 1998.
Marshall has been fortunate to have Blackboards, comprehensive digital learning environment,
so we have an array of resources from the company which helps support our teaching learning
platform.
The use of Blackboard tools has really streamlined a lot of processes across the university that
have taken a tremendous amount of time and a tremendous amount of staff in years past
Blackboard helps us create a connected experience for all of our students and faculty by creating
a one stop shop where they can find everything for teaching and learning.
At Marshall University, we use Blackboard to really grow a lot of our institution, uh,
initiatives.
It's so seamless and a lot of ways that students don't even realize some of the things they
use on a daily basis.
Our Blackboard products, students don't realize that they are moving from one product to the
next because it is very seamless and very intuitive.
I use the breakout groups and collaborate.
It's one of my favorite features of it is wonderful.
So one of the key projects that I use is um, clinical nutrition case studies with my graduate
students.
And so they are given a patient in a case and they work together through collaborate,
the breakout groups there and they come up with a plan for their patient and then they're
able to turn that in in Blackboard and it's a wonderful feature because then I can go
great then based on their group work, but also give some individual feedback as well.
Blackboard helps me design courses that engaged learners with faculty members by providing
us with tools that hold student interest, tools that help students learn in new and
exciting ways.
Since these are distant students and I can't see them face to face completing nutritional
assessments is I'll have them video themselves performing one on a family member or a friend.
Submit that and then I'm able to provide one on one feedback to them based on to remember
this.
Don't forget that, and then provide a little bit of constructive criticism for them.
Blackboard has changed my life.
I will say that it is great.
For my Freshman and Sophomore year, I had meal plans, you know, Blackboard made it very
easy for me to just be able to swipe my card and have access to food or swipe my card and
have access to get into the library.
Something else that's really convenient is you don't have to carry a key to get into
your dorm if you just unlocked the main door of your dorm with your id and you can just
get in, which is actually a safe feature and nice because you don't have to carry another
extra set of keys.
So an additional thing that we use our ideas for is to get into basketball games and football
games.
You don't have to stand in line and wait for a ticket or bring money.
Literally just swipe your ID and get right into the game.
You don't have to miss anything, which is really awesome.
The Blackboard card simplifies my life as a student.
Just being able to just have that one card in and understand as long as I have this,
I'm able to go a lot of places on campus.
We wanted a way for the students to be able to access the dining halls.
Even if they don't have their ID card, you had to send them all over campus to get a
new card or a temporary card, so if a person was to not have their card, they can go in
and simply use the biometrics.
It's very simple.
During the enrollment, what we do is we actually cannot take scans of your fingers.
Then at that point you can go over to any of the dining halls, walk in and say, how
do you not have my id card?
And they'll tell you the standard searcher or finger and the system.
When that happens, they're allowed to go in and eat.
Blackboard helps us create a safe and connected campus experience.
We very much have a mobile first approach.
Students like that, parents like that, administrators like that, and students appreciate being able
to receive notifications of events of health and safety on campus through their phones.
I think the Blackboard help desk is very important because we are not available 24/7.
Having that first line of defense opportunity for the student to be able to contact someone
either by chat or by phone when they're experiencing technical difficulties is really helpful for
West Virginia is extremely rural.
This is not a state that has 100 percent access to bandwidth and so if a student is experiencing
a problem in their locale, they could be in Jane, Leu, Pawpaws, Cucumber, West Virginia,
and have a problem for students.
Success being available.
Twenty four slash seven with technical support is very important.
Blackboard products have really helped us meet those accommodation needs for students,
whether it be an extension for a test time, whether it be captions or transcription of
a, uh, a lecture from a professor.
The implementation of some new Blackboard tools for accessibility will really help us
in that conversation with professors who may not understand what it means to make content
accessible because there's products will automatically take your file and they will make it accessible
for the students.
Most of the getting over the Hump for faculty for accessibility has just been able to explain
things in a way that makes sense.
How easy it is to make things accessible.
They're thrilled because they say, I can do this.
Making courses accessible makes courses greater for every student they hit.
Every type of learner.
Technology is wonderful, especially for an individual who might be experiencing some
kind of challenge, whether it be a sight impairment or hearing impairment.
We can really use Blackboard, especially the upcoming ally tool to leverage that so that
we can be inclusive and we can provide a way students to consume that content regardless
of any of their challenges were using Blackboards, flexible solutions to help us with several
of our key initiatives.
Marshall University just in the last two years has added 15 new programs.
Using Blackboard, we're able to reach our students no matter where they are anytime,
any place.
We have created several new online and hybrid programs.
We've also increased our retention and recruitment.
We're using Blackboard to help us with closing the assessment loop so that we've got information
that's concrete that ties back to the program outcomes.
Having Blackboard available has helped us really leverage the technology so that we
can be more efficient and more effective.
And my role in overseeing assessment at Marshall University, um, we use Blackboard to assess
student work from the classroom.
This is work that is meaningful to students work that will show us whether or not students
are meeting the outcomes that we expect them to meet by the time they graduate from Marshall
University.
This gives us a very robust assessment of how our students are doing.
We can make sure the students are progressing over time as they should.
We need evidence to make sure that students are achieving the outcomes the university
have set for them.
If they're not, then we need to take that information and decide what we need to do
to improve student learning.
At the institution, if you have Blackboard tools, you have the ability to use rubrics
to tie in those specific program tools and demonstrate your academic integrity, demonstrate
how you're meeting those program needs and demonstrate how your students are going to
be prepared for that profession specifically when they leave the nest.
Now that we have a comprehensive Blackboard learning environment, we're able to take the
work that students are doing in the classroom, um, and capture that for university level
assessment.
We don't have to ask students to do more than one thing or faculty to do more than one thing.
Blackboard's a flexible solutions certainly help us to be more efficient in terms of university
assessment.
Everyone dreads accreditation time.
It can be painful.
It doesn't have to be at Marshall.
The ID card is the life of a student or university id card is used for everything.
It's the one card that we use for anything from norm accesses to mill plans, to ticket
events, to commerce, to anything for finances.
Blackboard certification system allows me to feel safe and secure because anytime there's
any dangerous situation going on on campus or around campus, we are notified immediately.
Notifications makes me feel safe and secure and ways of understanding that something's
happened.
My sophomore year we had a big snow here.
The university was closed.
Blackboard had that notification system that runs through the university so I can.
I can trust this, especially with my little Honda, you know, it's not going to make it
out in the snow.
The Blackboard help desk helps us scale our resources tremendously.
Our institution and other institutions across the state and across the country have seen
several budget cuts, so we haven't been able to replenish our staff as quickly as we would
like students today.
They really want instant results.
They want instant answers.
We don't have a large amount of staff, but Blackboard tools have really helped us streamline
our process so that we can get the most out of our time and the most out of our effort.
I think Blackboard help students meet today's expectations at Marshall and that it's timely,
it's accessible, and it's modern.
You know, that the students are getting, um, a rigorous experience, but at the same time
they're able to work at their leisure and get a quality education as a whole is you
don't have the in the classroom, you can be anywhere, wherever you're comfortable, you'd
be in a coffee shop and be able to engage with one another in a scenery that is limitless
in waysat Marshall and other institutions.
Everything is data driven.
We use that information so that we can improve continuously and find ways to enhance our
teaching learning environment.
We use a lot of Blackboard data and reports in order to create better courses by seeing
what students are engaging with, by seeing how long students are engaging with something
that is on the court.
It's extremely helpful to have Blackboard tools that show us student behaviors, especially
those students who might be at risk when we have any kind of analytics.
Then we're able to see where we have some issues.
Um, we can target remediation, we can target other efforts to assist with retention.
We see student activity through the Blackboard analytics tool and we can identify those students
who might be at risk for various types of issues, whether it be grade related or perhaps
they're not logging in as frequently as they should or there are other indirect indicators
that we can see through that system that help us kind of identify weaknesses or little areas
where we can work with faculty or work with the other individuals on campus who play a
role in that entire environment.
We use Blackboard products to promote academic honesty in a way that is just seamless with
the rest of the course.
These are tools that are already built into Blackboard so we don't have to pay another
vendor and exorbitant fee that goes up every year.
Blackboard offers these services that we have for you already built in so that we can help
with academic integrity and academic honesty.
I also use the safe assign a function in Blackboard so that for assignments, longer papers and
writing assignments, the students have the ability to check what kind of problematic
areas may exist within their paper.
With respects to plagiarism.
The student has the opportunity to make corrections to their paper, allowing a better learning
experience, and then they could submit a final paper that's void of any problematic passages
or plagiarism.
It's a lot of them go into a class thinking they understand what plagiarism is or what
it is not, but then using safe assign, they're better able to assess what what problematic
you know, text may look like, so with the highlighted passages and safe assign, you
know they're able better able to discern where the paper may need adjusting.
Having Blackboard analysis of practically everything that happens with within the system
is very helpful for us to make informed decisions, especially when we're expending state funds
and state resources that are extremely precious and an environment of shrinking budgets.
Board has got the reporting down to where it streamlined.
We can check if you just want to check one reader, if you want to check one, one location,
one meal plan or anything like that.
You can do all that at one time through the reporting system, which streamlines it down.
It makes it easy for everybody to use.
One of the more common examples of using our emergency notification system through Blackboard
is the campus closings during inclement weather, using the Blackboard, we can quickly get the
word out to students, faculty and staff also for those other more serious situations where
there may be a public safety issue.
Local law enforcement is in pursuit of something and letting folks know due to the campus proximity
to the city, what's what's going on.
Blackboard helps us keep up with student expectations by meeting them where they are.
I'm a full time student and I have two jobs.
The mobile standpoint of Blackboard, you know, knowing when my assignments are due, knowing
when I should turn something in, getting notifications for those assignments when they're supposed
to be due.
That's very helpful to me just because I'm always ripping and running so and obviously
I was on my phone on me so when I get that notification I'm like okay, I need to make
time to do this because you know it is coming up with our card systems that we have with
the accounts, with the mobile apps, with all that.
That is what the convenience that the students are looking for, that's all that's all the
students want.
They want the ease and convenience of a card with board helping us.
We've been able to set up all that whiteboard, allows us to reach students who again, are
working.
Most students, especially in this area, cannot afford to attend school without working.
And our students are working two and three jobs.
They have other responsibilities.
We can allow students have access to education through Blackboard, um, that they wouldn't
otherwise have access to.
We started to see a decline in our enrollment in the traditional brick and mortar classroom
for our graduate program.
So Blackboard helped us in increasing our enrollment by offering our program to a wider
audience as well as to working professionals.
We weren't reaching a lot of the practitioners such as probation officers, law officers,
or corrections officers who have a full time job.
We've doubled our enrollment and we project or at least hope to triple our enrollment.
Um, within the next couple of years.
Blackboard helps drive student success at Marshall by offering a wide variety of ways
for us to reach our students and for faculty to reach out to those students.
Everything that we do is driven by student success.
Every decision that we make in online learning and that our university is what's gonna be
best for the student.
There's a lot of things that we value with the partnership with Blackboard.
One, it's it's one company, but there are a number of products and there's an.
There's a certain independence with those products.
The products are designed to work well together.
Certainly makes it easier for us to acquire, deploy, and manage those services.
The thing that I value most about our partnership with Blackboard now is that I really feel
like we're being heard.
I've really appreciate the effort that's been made the past few years to be on track with
roadmaps, to be transparent with information.
To really be honest with us as an institution, we're working with individuals who are former
teachers.
We're working with individuals who are former faculty members at other institutions.
That's extremely important.
Colleague speaking to colleague, we appreciate Blackboard if they've been with us for over
20 years, but with the partnerships that come along, if you have a growing a cut like a
family, and what that means is you know the.
You know what's going to happen.
They help you out there looking out for you.
They know that they know what the challenges are going to be and the and sometimes if you
do not have that, they know what's going to happen.
Not Everybody knows what tomorrow holds, but if you have somebody that's always trying
to help look out for you, it becomes a great partner and great partners are hard to come
by.