| Answers |
| Better ability to copy content between courses. I run the website for four courses with overlapping content, and it would be useful to copy announcements (and any other content besides just documents or assignments) from one course to another. |
I would like the capability of my interactivity with course materials and the tests.
I would like the capability of providing immediate feedback on individual test items. |
| I'd like to have most of the courses I taught in the past deleted from the list of courses; it takes too long to scroll down to my current courses. It's a real time-waster. |
| allowing documents to have embedded internal links. |
| no |
| More training sessions. |
| make it easier to share documents using the dropbox |
An online tutorial, if it doesn't already exist. |
| It would be nice to have the real-time multiple choice function that TWEN has. I could use something like that (a live polling feature) in class. |
| I think that the work I see the staff doing now matches my needs. Safe Assignment submissions were a bit buggy last quarter, but that's to be expected--and it's a very important tool for my courses. |
| Speedier service from the media services center. It took 5 weeks to get a film streamed to my course site, by which time the film was no longer relevant. But CMS itself, and the helpdesk, have been invaluable. |
| It's pretty good as is. Wish that the regular Northwestern e-mail system were as good. |
| Where can I find descriptions of what type of access different properties for users has. For example, what is the difference between an instructor and a TA or a course builder, etc. It drives me crazy that when I need to enroll a user I can't at the same time specify the user's properties (student, TA, grader, etc.), but have to do a second step through list/modify users. |
| Make it less tedious to develop a calendar, quiz or survey. It seems that often windows must be closed to go onto the next entry. |
| Trainings for both students and instructors |
| Site navigation is confusing. Please simplify. (for example, drop box is available only through via the control panel, doesn't make immediate sense to me. Also uploading course documents requires that you first find a tiny link to "edit mode". These more routine activities should be more apparently. Advanced features (such as chat, discussions, quizzes) were not used only because of lack of knowledge about them and because we're not sure how to incorporate them into the pedagogy. Perhaps some examples or best practices would help. |
| The ability to stream/post MP3 audio or Quicktime video clips |
| Fewer clicks to do the tasks. |
| It would be nice to have a comment column option in the Gradebook to list things like missing lab scores. |
| I find it very helpful. I don't use it yet enough to have suggestions for changes. |
| Blackboard should have one-button capability to make files and folders available/unavailable. You can delete with one button but to change availability you must push "modify" and then go through the edit process. |
| more colors, students can see the grades of everyone |
| A better gradebook will definitelly help. In my field it is custom to drop the lowest score of the homework grades (for example), but gradebook doens't allow such operations. Also, it is customary to use two alternative grading schemes (either quizzes, two midterms, final or quizzes, best of the two midterms, final) - and assign to each student the best percentage our of the two scores, which again is a feature missing in the gradebook. |
| There needs to be a feature that allows the teacher to create folders for assignments that lets students submit into a particular folder, rather than the large digital dropbox or the discussion board, which i have found quite awkward for that kind of exchange. |
| Presently, when students withdraw from the class, their grades are lost from the gradebook. This is a serious problem - it means that we need to store the same grades elsewhere, and yet I would prefer for the CMS gradebook to be the only one I needed to use. Is there no way to arrange things so that "historic" data such as grades of students who have withdrawn is archived, rather than disappearing? |
| I would like to be able to post a pdf document under announcements. |
Make training available to students on CMS. |
| It would be useful to have a better system for grade managment. The current one is limited and requires either uploading or downloading grades to easily and effectively manage them. |
| I had trouble embedding hyperlinks to websites. Also, sometimes I'd like to post full-text of an article on the site, but not enough room is allowed. |
| Better tools for managing files in the Digital Drop Box, for instance to be able to sort by name or date, to delete files as a group (or download as a group). Something more like a Windows Explorer view. |
I find difficulties when writing notes using the CMS. Double-spaces, fonts and letter sizes. |
| none |
| List courses by most current/active - it's always a pain to scroll down to find my current course when I want to add something to Blackboard. Uploading grades doesn't always work. |
| Allow Instructor to add other Instructors or TA's without having to add them first as students. |
| None |
| Make accessing e-mail easier and faster. Allow for more customizable views and searches of e-mails. |
| Make the total grade calculator in the gradebook more flexible, add features like "take a weighted sum of columns A+ 0.8xB + D and write the answer in the new column G" |
| The top level interface is not as intuitive as I would like or expect. Once I am into a specific task it is easy, but getting there is often a process of hit or miss. |
| Collaborative app, a la Writeboard. Saveable Gantt charts, downloadable to MS Project. |
| Better features for large classes with multiple TAs. |
| digital dropbox did not work half the time -- files were corrupt |
| Cannot think of one now |
Creating surveys, and some presentations that can motivate more the students. |
My students had lots of problems with Safe Assignment this fall, and it was not readily apparent to my students how to get help when they encountered problems with the software. |
It should be easier to create tests from word documents
It should be easier to move, change, edit content without going through multiple clicks to get things done.
|
| Make it easier to upload folders of documents and to move documents around once they're uploaded. Right now, there are too many steps to go through. |
| I would like to be able to administer a closed-book exam in class for students to take on their own laptop. They would need to download a computer program like soft-test that requires that they restart their computer and it does not allow any other programs to run except the test program. For students that do not own laptops they could register to take the exam in a computer lab on campus. The benefit would be immediate grading of multiple choice exams and graders would not suffer through reading students handwriting in essay exams. |
| Anything to make the system easier to use. It takes forever to check student answers and enter grades for quizzes. It would be great if you could eliminate some of the notification buttons and if the system would automatically go the the next student in the list. |
| Need a general clean-up of the user interface. Better integration of the features and functionality of the different systems. Ability to make some features accessible to alumni and professionals in the community (as we often involve them in student projects). For example, we had to use SurveyMonkey because we were administering a survey to alums of the program. |
Overall satisfied. |
The system is improving, but still pretty clunky. In particular I would like fewer buttons to click, and more control over the order in which items appear. For example I would like to set up a course document named Linear Programming with three downloadable files attached to it, in an order I specify, and I would like to be able to do this without entering three separate modifications to the document. But I guess this is something for the developers of this product to get around to . . .
In general I avoid training events because I am short of time. |
| none |
| I found the creation of tests within CMS to be tedious. I would much rather be able to import test questions from other sources by copying them and then making whatever adjustments are necessary within CMS. Some of the students also disliked using the software for testing. |
| Need more instruction with employing system for assignments |
| My students had difficulty printing pdf files posted to the course site. I was told this is a common problem; it needs to be fixed. |
| I would like to know more about groups and what they are and how they work. Also about the dropbox feature. |