Interview issues

blackboard > about blackboard > fall 2000 faculty survey > interview issues

Comments from the survey and personal interviews identified a number of important issues both with the courseware implementation.

Grade book

Faculty members mentioned both in the survey and in interviews that the lack of grade book functionality impeded their implementation of Blackboard. By far, the issue most commonly raised was its inability to list names alphabetically. This issue alone was mentioned in every faculty interview. Fortunately, the Spring upgrade corrects this problem. Faculty members also brought up the fact that Blackboard's grade book did not allow Excel files to be uploaded into it. Users would need to enter all grade book items individually through Blackboard's form based system and finally assigning point values. Faculty members found this process to be cumbersome.

The grade book lacked the functionality that is available in spreadsheet programs to sort and search items and to calculate grades using formulas. It would simply add up all columns and give a final point total. Not surprisingly, only 44 percent of faculty chose to use the grade book function.