The second Teaching Seminar of 2022 spring term at Sichuan University – Pittsburgh Institute (SCUPI) – “Blackboard Hacks and Technology in the Active-Learning” – led by Dr. James McDougall was held last Friday, May 13th in Room 212, Zone 4, Liberal Arts Building.

Blackboard is one of the most used global educational platforms in higher education. It supports the whole teaching process including attendance, group discussion, quiz and test, teaching evaluation, etc. Blackboard has been introduced to Sichuan University – Pittsburgh Institute (SCUPI) since the year of 2016.

Dr. McDougall, along with other members of the SCUPI HSS (Humanities and Social Sciences) group, have been dedicated to the application of technology in teaching to promote active learning. Through this workshop, he wanted to show how Blackboard facilitates their daily teaching activities.

Dr. McDougall began with sharing some of the functions he uses in Blackboard, such as the grouping function, which allows instructors to divide students into groups, so that students can participate in group discussion and presentation. Also, the whole process can be recorded by Blackboard, and instructors can review students’ performance in a later time. Dr. McDougall encourages students to share their knowledge and insights on Blackboard in and after classes, which can promote active learning.

Dr. McDougall then put all instructors into different groups and asked them to discuss how they use Blackboard in their own classes. Normally, instructors use Blackboard to upload teaching materials, assign homework, give grades and so forth.

Dr. Jangho Yoon shared an interesting function of Blackboard.

At SCUPI, Dr. Yoon teaches engineering courses such as “Rigid Body Dynamics” and “Statics”, and he usually designs his tests and quizzes on Blackboard.

Dr. Yoon found out that Blackboard can generate variables randomly and answers according to questions and formulas given by the instructor, which saves lots of time and avoids cheating. Blackboard can also automatically grade students’ quizzes and tests and analyze grades. In this way, the instructor can better track students’ performance.

Dr. McDougall’s teaching seminar ended in a lively discussion.

From https://scupi.scu.edu.cn/en/activities/scupi-teaching-seminar%e4%b8%a8blackboard-hacks-and-technology-in-the-active-learning