learning - Academic Conferences Limited

Karen Hughes Miller and Linda Leake
with the Schools of Medicine and Dentistry providing the list of eligible students and their User IDs to
the event organizers. Students are then entered as “members” of the organization. (For some years,
this has been as many as 400 learners, but still seems to be within the capacity for a Blackboard
organization site to function well.) Using the site’s e-mail function, learners are contacted with an
invitation to log in and select their preferences of presentations and discussions. Reminder e-mails
are sent to ensure the presentation selections are made, and learners are assigned groups according
to the sessions they select. The conference agenda is posted as a printable document, as are print-ityourself
name badges, meal tickets, bus passes (when sessions are held off campus), and other
conference essentials. Some speakers also enjoy sharing their PowerPoints or links to their web sites
when the event has concluded so students can use it as an ongoing reference.
Originally, students who came prepared with all their materials pre-printed were invited to the “fast”
registration lines and students who came without were in the “slow” lines, but preparation seems to
have improved over the years. Currently students’ ID badges are scanned electronically as they enter
and this list can be compared to the “roster” from the Grade Center to ensure each student has
participated.
Several assessment strategies have been applied over the past five years including learner
satisfaction surveys and content quizzes for specific sessions. Because we knew which sessions
specific learners planned to attend, we could direct content quizzes to specific groups. For program
evaluation purposes, the Grade Center provides a good record of which sessions were most attended
and which session’s content quizzes scored the highest.
Over the past five years there have been several staff members assigned to manage the site;
therefore, several variations of Blackboard’s technical capabilities have been applied. But for each
event, the use of Blackboard to administer this large face-to-face event for students from different
schools and departments has been uniformly successful. Because there are so many Blackboard
users on campus, there are many individuals who can offer advice and support to a new staff member
assigned to this task. This would not be the case if we had elected to create an event website using
software that required unique training. Students, because they are familiar with using Blackboard
for their coursework, have no hesitation logging on to find the documents they need or to reply to
quizzes and surveys. The course “banner” for the organization site is the same design as the cover for
campus flyers and other publicity in order to help learners connect the site and the event, and all
language in the site is designed to be as inclusive as possible to reflect the overall theme.
The major limitation to using a Blackboard organization for this event (or for any other purpose) is
that while quiz results are linked to specific learners and reported to the leader (instructor) as discreet
data; survey results are anonymous but only available as aggregate data thus limiting the statistical
analysis that can be applied. So, if you prefer having survey data as discrete data for in-depth
analysis, you must create the survey as a quiz and sacrifice anonymity. You can certainly assure
learners that their identities will be kept confidential, but that is somewhat different from true
anonymity.
2. Case #2: Preparing advanced students to be effective tutors
Peer tutoring has become an important component of student support on many college campuses,
but those who study this trend have realized that simply being knowledgeable with the content of a
course does not equate to being able to tutor others successfully in that content. Teaching/training
skills such as explaining content and responding to questions (Roscoe and Chi 2007, 2008) are skills
that can be taught to tutors resulting in measurable improvements in their success.
U of L’s undergraduate tutoring program REACH (Resources for Academic Achievement) has been
internationally recognized. The program’s web site was awarded Third Place in the annual 2010
Learning Support Centers in Higher Education (LSCHE) Website Excellence Award; and in 2009,
REACH received both a Program of Excellence and the Tutor of Excellence by the Association for the
Tutoring Professions (ATP). REACH recently received its three-year certification renewal from the
College Reading and Learning Association (CRLA), and is one of the only about 260 Tutor Training
programs worldwide to gain certification from the CRLA.
At the beginning of each academic year, REACH holds two days of tutor training. The first day is
spent orienting the tutors to the mission and goals of REACH, reviewing learning styles, and providing
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