As Academic Computing introduces a new version of Blackboard, the online education tool, to campus, it will hold a focus group Thursday to gain student feedback about the service.
Blackboard 6.1 is being beta-tested in 20 classes " less than 10 percent of Dartmouth's courses. After any bugs have been hammered out, the new version will be introduced campus-wide this summer.
Most of the inquiries that have come in concerning the new version so far have had to do with educating instructors about feature changes rather than technical problems, according to Jeffrey Bohrer, who assists the faculty and maintains the Blackboard service. "I'm not sure students will notice a lot of changes but instructors will find useful features," Bohrer said.
Blackboard 6.0 was released in January 2003, but Academic Computing chose not to adopt the new version, as they had recently succeeded in stabilizing version 5.5, the software's current incarnation. Blackboard 6.0 contained some technical defects that have since been corrected in version 6.1.
About half of Dartmouth's professors use Blackboard, while the other half either maintain their own websites or choose not to use any website. The government, economics, English, and engineering departments use it most frequently, Bohrer said.
"I use the multiple choice part of Blackboard instead of grading it myself. It gives me more time to do more useful things for students. Blackboard 6 is faster and more flexible," economics professor Andreas Bentz said.
More technically inclined professors, such as Thomas Cormen of the computer science department, find Blackboard to be restrictive and prefer to create their own websites.
"I recognize that there are some real advantages to using Blackboard, and I might consider trying it out in the next year or two. But I already have web sites that work, and I would rather put my time into interacting with students," Cormen told The Dartmouth.
Dartmouth began using a form of Blackboard, called CourseInfo in 1999 and has used Blackboard itself for two and a half years, according to Malcolm Brown, director of Academic Computing. Blackboard has grown over that time and filed for a $75 million initial public offering with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on March 19.
Thursday's focus group, which will be held from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. in Collis 101, will ask students to comment on current features as well as suggest new directions for the service.
