The Learning Environment of Blackboard Learn

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This week I wanted to examine an available learning environment and have decided to focus on Blackboard Learn, a learning management system that is readily and expansively used by not only Sul Ross State University students, but many other institutions as well.

As a learning environment, Blackboard at its most broad function, aims to facilitate traditional course instruction or training through an online platform available to multiple parties, including students at the collegiate level. Seeing as how my experience with Blackboard has taken place during multiple points in my education, I felt that allows me a certain comfort in determining what functions best and what could be improved upon within the system itself.

There are a few notable aspects of this learning environment to focus on, starting with what cognitive presence was exhibited during the use of the Blackboard platform. This may differ in experience depending on the specific courses one might take, but the cognitive presence is implemented based on how the instructor designs their preferred outcomes to impact new learning experiences for students overall. In my case, the cognitive presence of the course I am currently enrolled in, utilizes various videos, journals, articles, and social media platforms in order to cultivate an environment of experiential learning. 

The next focus is on the teacher presence. I would say that this centers entirely around how effective courses may ultimately be for students since teachers or instructors could implement as much or as little as they wish towards course outcomes. In my experience, the effective learning outcomes of the Blackboard platform are intrinsically tied to how the instructor has designed the course to promote either successful or problematic digital environments for students to thrive.

So how does Blackboard facilitate social presence? While not abundant in its offerings, it at least does so by allowing students to communicate in a few ways, including forum discussions and e-mail. While basic, it still gives students an opportunity to learn from one another and start slowly towards building collaborative team interactions in the future.

While I think Blackboard could be improved with greater features that allow for more social interaction between students and instructors, overall, I believe it functions as a simplistic, yet effective learning environment. More importantly, it allows instructors to integrate various resources that build outcomes for students to strive towards and learn together.

Comments

  1. J-RayFebruary 12, 2021 at 10:56 AM

    Thank you for sharing! I wondered how the instructor might improve their cognitive presence? How does design play a role? Blackboard provides a good starting point to facilitate social presence.

    ReplyDelete

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