LMS 60 Wimba

Wimba makes a number of tools to extend Blackboard's communication and collaboration capabilities. Wimba Classroom, Pronto, Voice, and Create were all featured in the booth at BbWorld.

Listen to LMS60 (7 minutes)

Web site: http://www.wimba.com/

LMS 59 Blackboard Sync

Blackboard Sync allows Facebook users to check their Blackboard sites and see what new things have been posted. It is part of the Blackboard Beyond initiative. In the future they will be extending this capability to the iPhone and other platforms. There are a number of ways to configure the system in order to provide whatever protection you wish for login credentials.

Listen to LMS59 (16 minutes)

Sync web site: http://www.blackboardsync.com/

Beyond web site:  http://www.blackboard.com/communities/beyond/

LMS 58 Panopto

Panopto gives the CourseCast system to schools through the Socrates project. The CourseCast system allows recording of audio, screen, video, document camera, and pretty much anything you can hook up to a computer. When students watch the recording, they can take notes which are then time stamped to the location in the video. This was Pamopto's first time in the exhibit hall at BbWorld.

Listen to LMS58 (7 minutes)

Web site: http://panopto.com/ 

LMS 57 Parature

Respndus makes a self-service system including ticketing, knowledge base, and more. The ease of use, both for the user and the support people, sets it apart from other such systems.

Listen to LMS57 (10 minutes)

Web site: http://parature.com/

LMS 56 Starfish Retention Solutions

Starfish Retention Solutions is a new company whose goal is to help institutions engage, motivate and graduate more students. They are in the process of launching their first two packages and will be adding more in the near future. The company is led by David Yaskin, former director of product strategy at Blackboard.

Listen to LMS56 (12 minutes)

Web site: http://starfishsolutions.com/

LMS 55 Agilix Labs (Backpack)

Agilix Labs makes the Backpack program that works with Blackboard. Students (and instructors) are able to download their material from Blackboard into their Agilix Notebook software and work with it when they are offline, notate it freely, and combine it with other documnets, all for around $20.

Listen to LMS55 (9 minutes)

Web site: http://backpack.agilix.com

LMS 54 Respondus

Respondus announced their StudyMate Class Server at BbWorld. We talked about it and their other three products.

Listen to LMS54 (9 minutes)

Web site: http://respondus.com

LMS 53 Learning Objects

Learning Objects provides Wiki, Blog, Podcast, and search capabilities through the Campus Pack. They have a number of interesting case studies on their Web site.

Listen to LMS53 (4 minutes)

Web site:  http://learningobjects.com

LMS 52 Waypoint

This is the first of nine short interviews, recorded at the exhibit hall at BbWorld'08 in Las Vegas, NV. We start with Waypoint, a company that provides a number of interesting and powerful capabilities built around rubrics.

Listen to LMS52 (8 minutes)

Waypoint web site: http://gowaypoint.com

LMS 51 Chris Higgins, University of Maryland

Chris Higgins, Manager of Learning Technologies at the University of Maryland, will be presenting the session "Classmates, Communities and Cohorts: Empowering Students Through Blackboard Software" at BbWorld '08 in Las Vegas, July 15-17. In this interview we talked about their use of Wimba Live Classroom to provide virtual group study rooms for students in classes, and, now, their project to make the same capability to student organizations at the University of Maryland.

Listen to LMS51 (37 minutes)

LMS 50 Jerry Riehl, Univ. of Tennessee-Knoxville

UT-Knoxville was one of the first schools to license Blackboard. Jerry Riehl talks about their "certification" program for faculty, and their recent roll-out of SafeAssign. Jerry will be presenting the session "A Safe Implementation of SafeAssign" at Blackboard World in Las Vegas.

Listen to LMS50 (45 minutes)

LMS 49 John Doherty, Northern Arizona University

John Doherty talks about the eLearning Commons that Northern Arizona University is creating for their faculty. They are making a web location so that trainers and faculty can share information, bring people with common interests together, and increase participation in their various initiatives.

Listen to LMS49 (47 minutes)

LMS 48 Cindy Hart, West Virginia Univ.

Cindy Hart coordinates the development of on-line courses at West Virginia University. In this interview we talk about some of the innovative strategies they are using to increase student engagement, including 3-D modeling, flash animation, embedded audio, digital video, podcasts, blogs and wikis.

Listen to LMS48 (35 minutes)

LMS 47 Erin Soles, Univ. of North Florida

Erin Soles will be presenting "Extreme Makeover: Blackboard Edition" at BbWorld '08 in Las Vegas July 15-17, 2008. In this interview we talk about the use of template courses at UNF, the FAQ that faculty can link to from their Blackboard courses, the use of RSS feeds, and other things to make a course site special.

Listen to LMS47 (43 minutes)

LMS 46 Michael Chamberlain, Portland State Univ., Oregon

Michael Chamberlain is the Instructional Designer who manages the Blackboard CE system at Portland State University. Michael is just finishing their upgrade from WebCT 4 to Blackboard CE 6. He talks about the challenges they have faced and strategy they used to keep faculty expectations realistic. I interviewed Michael live, in his office, while I was in Portland for a conference, rather than using Skype to record a telephone conversation, as I normally do.

Listen to LMS46 (40 minutes)

LMS 45 Wayne Jacobs, LeTourneau Univ., Longview, TX

How can Blackboard help faculty meet the learning needs of all the students in a class? How can all the students be actively engaged? What is active learning? In this interview, Wayne, Interim Dean of the School of Education and Chair of Kinesiology, talks about how he uses Blackboard in his classes to encourage active learning and how the School of Education participates in the faculty development at LeTourneau University in Longview, Texas. Wayne will be presenting "Active Learning Using Technology" at BbWorld'08, July 15-17.

Listen to LMS45 (39 minutes)

LMS 44 Robbie Morse, Ivy Tech CC, Indiana

Robbie Morse uses SCORM objects to add interaction and engagement to on-line courses. Robbie speaks from experience, teaching Spanish at the University of ndianapolis and working on the creation of standard on-line course materials for all campuse of the Ivy Tech Community College System. Robbie will be presenting "Beyond Blackboard – Building on Student Interaction with SCORM Objects" at BbWorld'08, July 15-17.

Listen to LMS44 (37 minutes)

LMS 43 Dan Driscoll, Drexel University

Dan Driscoll uses the Waypoint add-on system to create a peer review system in his first-year composition courses at Drexel. He discusses how he sets up the rubrics and then has the students fill them out. The process of applying the rubric to the papers gves students as much or more value than the feedback given back to the original author. Dan will be presenting "Course-Embedded Assessmen and the Peer Review Process" at BbWorld'08, July 15-17.

Listen to LMS43 (38 minutes)

LMS 42 Rosemary Skeele, Seton Hall

Rosemary Skeele describes how Seton Hall is using the Waypoint addon for Blackboard to help assess learning, primiarily for accreditation purposes. Waypoint allows you to integrate rubrics into Blackboard and in the process opens new possibilities. Rosemary will be presenting "Blackboard and Waypoint: Perfect Together" at BbWorld'08, July 15-17.

Listen to LMS42 (39 minutes)

LMS 41 David Carter-Tod, Virginia CC System

Anyone who is part of the Blackboard community will be familiar with Davd Carter-Tod. As a Blackboard administrator, he wrote the Javascript that kept students from printing or copying tests. He has participated in the BLKBRD-L, giving his time to help other system admins and discuss important topics. In this interview he talks about his responsibilities now, as Information Systems Architect for the Information Technology Services of the Virginia Community College System. He also talks about his philosophy on applying upgrades and where he feels his systems should be relative to the current Blackboard release.

Listen to LMS41 (43 minutes)

LMS 40 Donna Wicks, Kettering Univ, Mich

Donna Wicks, at Kettering University, put Blackboard 8.0 into production before any other school that we know of. Kettering had been part of the beta program, so they were ready to go the day 8.0 was officially released. Donna explains why they made the move so early, what plans they had made in advance, and how things went.

Listen to LMS40 (37 minutes)

(The Blackboard Faculty Support - BbFS - Podcast series has been renamed the Learning Management System - LMS - Podcast series. The web site is http://lmspodcast.com)

BbFS 39 Theresa Van Hoy, St. Mary's University, TX

Theresa Van Hoy is the instructor who, with Azalea Boehm (previously interviewed: BbFS34), won an Exemplary Course Award in 2007 for "The Sacred Feminine in Latin America." It is interesting to be able to hear from both the instructional designer (Azalea) and the instructor (Theresa) to see how they worked together and complemented each other's strengths. Theresa is now the Director of the Latin American and Latino Studies Program at St. Mary's University in San Antonio, Texas.

Listen to BbFS39 (35 minutes)
View course: The Sacred Feminine in Latin America
Go to Azalea Boehm's interview

BbFS 38 Joanne Nicoll, University of Pittsburgh

Joanne Nicoll, Associate Director of the Center for Instructional Development and Distance Education, University of Pittsburgh, won one of the Blackboard Exemplary Course awards in 2007 for the "Allied Health Education" course. Hear the interview and review the course.

Listen to BbFS38 (23 minutes)
View course: Allied Health Education

BbFS 37 Lisa Pupo, Spring-Ford HS, PA

Lisa Pupo is an instructor and course designer at Spring-Ford High School, in Pennsylvania. She is also a member of the Virtual High School consortium. He course, Cultural Identity Through Literature, won one of the Blackboard Exemplary Course awards in 2007.

Listen to BbFS37 (25 minutes)
View course: Cultural Identity Through Literature

BbFS 36 Kelly Dukelow, Kamehameha Schools, Hawaii

Kelly Dukelow is the Distance Learning Instructor at Kamehameha Schools in Hawaii. Their course, Hawaiian Pacific Literature, won one of the Blackboard Exemplary Course awards in 2007. Their team entered the competition to get feedback, and was selected as one of the winning entries. This was great recognition for the newly created Virtual Strategies and Distance Learning group.

Listen to BbFS36 (27 minutes)
View course: Hawaiian Pacific Literature

BbFS 35 Bill Vilberg, Univ. of Miami

This is a short apology for not posting any interviews during the fall. Interviews will begin being posted next week. There are three or four interviews from last summer that never got posted and then we will continue with new interviews. Look for a podcast each Monday or Tuesday.

Listen to BbFS35 (3 minutes)