Executive summary

blackboard > about blackboard > fall 2000 faculty survey > executive summary

These faculty members considered the most important functions of a course management system to be the ability to post a syllabus, announcements, content, contact information and MS Word documents. The pilot group most desired that a course tool be able to provide handouts, e-mail communication, discussion groups and a grade book. The features of Blackboard that they used the most were the course documents, syllabus and announcements functions, followed by grade book and discussion tools. Less than one-third of faculty used quizzes and group pages and less than ten percent used the calendar, digital drop box or virtual classroom features. Instructors in the Blackboard pilot implementation were mostly Windows users though nearly one-third (a higher percentage than in the student sample) used the Macintosh operating system. They had high level of expertise in e-mail and WWW browsers.

Faculty survey and interview responses were generally positive indicating overall satisfaction with the courseware implementation. Most agreed that Blackboard was easy to use and that CIT staff support was sufficient. The most common complaints were about the functionality of the grade book, the disabling of the e-mail tool (due to FERPA regulations), the authentication system that required a UTEID for course access, the multiple unique numbers per class which led to creation of multiple Blackboard sites for classes, problems associating teachers and assistants with courses, difficulty backing up courses and dissatisfaction with the Blackboard interface. Several instructors suggested that handouts or a student orientation would be helpful. Web-savvy faculty did not like the server response speed or the awkward process required to upload materials and make changes to their sites.

Survey findings regarding the use of the UT Direct portal revealed that faculty customized UT Direct slightly more than students but visited the portal less often.

Comments made by the pilot group seem to indicate that in spite of a number of technical, design and implementation difficulties, course management systems such as Blackboard can be a valuable resource for faculty and staff.