Each year, Blackboard users from all over the world come to BbWORLD (main conference) and DEVCON (developers conference) which is a national conference that is focused on using educational technologies in teaching and learning that contribute to student success. This year sessions were also streaming live via BbWORLDLive.
Over 2,000 educators, administrators, and #edtechies from over 30 countries attended the conference this year. There were over 200 client sessions offered at the event that shared best practices, while Bb corporate sessions focused on the next generation of tools and services that help meet the needs of students, faculty, and institutions. The exhibit hall featured a wide array of vendors with technology that integrate with Blackboard.
The conference was held from July 12-14 in Las Vegas, NV and 5 faculty and staff from Grand Valley State University (pictured from left to right Katie Clark, Eric Kunnen, Cheryl Kautz, Sherry Barricklow, and Szymon Machajewski) attended the event to present and to pick up the latest and greatest of everything Blackboard.
In addition to major announcements, such as new partnerships with IBM and Amazon, here are a few highlights from the conference that were captured by the GVSU eLearning and Emerging Technologies team:
- GVSU faculty members received their awards for “Most Inclusive Classrooms in the United States” in a session at the conference entitled: “Celebrating Inclusive Classrooms“. Cheryl Kautz, Affiliate Instructor, in the School of Computing and Information Systems at GVSU and Szymon Machajewski, Affiliate Instructor, in the School of Computing and Information Systems each received a certificate and recognition for their accomplishment.
Session Abstract: Building an inclusive classroom means anticipating the diverse needs of students in the classroom and ensuring your pedagogy, content, and classroom technology can easily adapt to meet the needs of every student. In support of Global Accessibility Awareness day 2016 the Blackboard team ran a contest to find the most inclusive classrooms in the United States. We were looking for teachers who went the extra mile to ensure their classrooms were set up for inclusion and enabled students of all abilities to succeed. We’re excited to provide the winners, Cheryl Kautz and Szymon Machajewski from Grand Valley State University with the opportunity to share their stories during this rocket session.
Here is a video of Szymon and Cheryl receiving their awards at the conference:
- Katie Clark presented at BbWorld DEVCON which is Blackboard’s developer conference in a session entitled: “Making it Simple: Automate Blackboard Administration using SIS Integration“
Session Abstract: GVSU has been using a SIS Integration for several years, and has developed ways to simplify user engagement opportunities. The university creates courses, users, and enrollments with SIS, but have started populating the hierarchy with courses and users based on Banner enrollments. It also uses data from Banner to create Academic Advising sites for individual advisors with their advisees enrolled. This integration enables the university to create organizations for academic units with students enrollments based on the applicable major or minor. - Szymon Machajewski and Eric Kunnen presented in a session at DEVCON with the University of Illinois at Chicago in a session entitled: “Open Source Analytics for Growing Adoption of Blackboard Learn using BbStats“
Session Abstract: BbStats has been a leading OSCELOT project for about seven years. The analytics tool reports on Blackboard Learn system health and usage and provides valuable information about activity and use patterns. This session will dive deeper into the tools and reports needed to increase adoption.This session highlighted the use of the free open source Blackboard Building Block called BbStats, written by Szymon Machajewski. The session was facilitated by Szymon who is an affiliate instructor at Grand Valley State University (GVSU) and serves at a Blackboard system administrator at UIC.Szymon Machajewski also presented in 2 additional sessions entitled: “Help! I need Somebody” (Blackboard Student Services & Managed Hosting) and “Using the ITIL Framework to Drive True Technology Adoption”.
- Session highlights were also captured in the following blog posts by Eric Kunnen:
- General Session: Innovating for the Future: Customer-Centric Solutions
Featuring Bb’s Charitable Giving Program, Bb Teacher of the Year, Captain Mark Kelly - Higher Education Rocket Sessions for Faculty and Instructional Designers
Featuring social presence in online learning and engaging faculty in quality online learning. - The Key to 21st Century Leadership
Featuring leadership tips from Admiral Stavridis. - Teaching and Learning Roadmap for Higher Education
Highlights from the Bb product roadmap and what is coming soon to a Blackboard near you. - General Session: Fueling Success: Learner-Focused Strategies
Featuring the IBM and Amazon partnerships and how does big data help us know our learners? - General Session: Unveiling Blackboard’s Latest Developments
Highlights from Bb’s corporate keynote and focus to help students succeed + new product announcements. - K12 Rocket Session
Quick tips from K12 teachers in leveraging Bb. - Open Source Analytics for Growing Adoption of Blackboard Learn Using BbStats
Panel on using data in Bb to help monitor use of Blackboard. - Mining for Gold in your Institution’s Blackboard Data
Finding the good bits of data from users in the activity accumulator, highlights from the SDSU and UMBC research findings.
- General Session: Innovating for the Future: Customer-Centric Solutions
More information about this conference can be found on the BbWorld16 website and via social #bbworld16 tag. Next year, the event will be held in New Orleans from July 25-27.
eLearning Technologies @GVSU 