Blackboard Learn, the primary course management system used by faculty, staff, teaching assistants, and students at NIU, continues to be an important platform for facilitating teaching and learning at NIU with over 96% of students and 92% of teaching faculty using the system during Fall 2015. To gain even more insight into how NIU is using Blackboard, the Division of Information Technology has implemented custom reporting capabilities within Blackboard that extends the built-in statistics tracking features for recording individual tool usage by course. As a result, we have an even better understanding of overall Blackboard adoption and tool use at NIU, and have the ability to track usage trends over time.
Here are some notable trends in Blackboard tool usage at NIU (also available for download here):
A few noteworthy usage trends as of Fall 2015 include:
- Overall Blackboard use stayed the same (96% of students using, 92% of faculty) between fall 2014 and fall 2015
- Recently, Blackboard adoption by teaching faculty made a significant jump from 82% (2013) to 92% (2014) which was maintained in 2015
- Blackboard tool use generally declined over the Summer and Fall 2015 semesters
- Most course instructors make use of Blackboard for posting announcement and content items (e.g., PowerPoint Slides, PDFs, Images, etc.), as well as for posting grades
- Assignments, tests, and Collaborate web conferencing continued their trend of increased use during the summer semester
Thank you to the Division of Information Technology for providing these usage statistics, as they have been useful in identifying what tools are being used most in Blackboard as well as recognizing trends usage over time.
For more information about Teaching with Blackboard at Northern Illinois University, visit http://www.niu.edu/blackboard.
