Recommended Effective Use of Blackboard

"Help Students Productively Manage Their Time"

"Time plus energy equals learning. Learning to use one's time well is critical for students and professionals alike. Allocating realistic amounts of time means effective learning for students and effective teaching for faculty" (Chickering & Ehrmann, 1996, p. 4).

Examples of Blackboard use
1. Announce major class events, assignments and approaching deadlines.
2. Consider listing all important course events on the calendar (exams, project due dates, presentations…).
3. Allow the students to choose the due date on one assignment.
4. Set deadlines for projects to help students meet course competency goals.
5. Balance the workload throughout the semester.

General best practices of structuring tasks over measurable times from current educational models
1. Provide the students with a calendar of the entire semester's work to be completed by student. Provide the grading scale/point value for each facet of the course.
2. Help students coordinate schedules between tasks in your class and tasks in all classes.
3. Promote the establishment of priorities.
4. Help students learn to manage commitments.
5. Provide students with a simple form for logging how much time and what time of the day they studied for one week and indicate how productively they studied during each of those study blocks (Cross & Angelo, 1993, p. 300-302; Angelo, 1993, p. 7). The Bradley University Learning Assistance Program has these forms as well as additional resources to help students better manage their time.
6. Encourage students to take advantage of resources (on the Internet, through other classmates and through the instructor).