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Midterm Grades for Blackboard

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By James M. Lang

A couple of years ago, my college began asking us to file midterm grades for freshmen in order to help identify those at risk of failing or dropping out. Although that means one more task to complete during the busiest time of the semester, midterm grades seem like a good idea because new students might not have a clear understanding of how to gauge their progress in a course.

I have one "new kid" in my classes who I am particularly eager to evaluate. This fall, I began using Blackboard -- the Web-based virtual learning environment that has found a home on so many college campuses, along with its competitors like WebCT. So as long as I'm banging out midterm grades, and avoiding work on the book I'm supposed to be writing, I'm going to issue a midterm grade here for Blackboard as well.

Most colleges and universities now offer some sort of virtual-learning environment (VLE) like Blackboard to their faculty members, one that is housed on the institution's servers and one that your information-technology department will probably help you set up for your courses. It facilitates communication with and between students through e-mail, messaging, and discussion boards; helps you manage paperwork and grading; provides a convenient place to store and retrieve all course-related documents; and creates opportunities for Web-based projects and interactions outside of the classroom.

Some of my forward-thinking colleagues have been using Blackboard since it arrived here on the campus in the fall of 2001. I'm a latecomer to it, in part because I have a very hit-or-miss interest in new technologies. (I still don't own a cell phone, for example, though I check my e-mail 4,000 times a day.)

My recent sabbatical gave me the time and energy to think about how to make use of Blackboard, and so I had sites set up for all three of my courses this semester: two sections of "Introduction to Literature" and a section of "Creative Nonfiction." I had spoken enough about Blackboard with colleagues and done enough research online that I had four specific expectations about what I hoped a virtual-learning environment could add to the real one in my classroom.

Organizing My Courses

I'm a slob. I have things organized in my head, but out in the world, not so much. My office has books and papers scattered everywhere, old computer cases and exam copies of textbooks, leftover and yet-to-be-eaten snacks, as well as a half-dozen tea mugs in various stages of cleanliness. I operate on the theory that the boiling water I pour into the mug sanitizes it for the cup of tea I'm making.

So my first expectation was that Blackboard would provide a convenient way for me to keep all course-related materials stored neatly in a database that I could use on the campus or from home. I intended to post the syllabus and all assignment sheets and handouts, as well as using the grade-book function to eliminate the need for my old-fashioned, spiral-bound grade book.

In this category, I'm giving Blackboard a solid A. It has done exactly what I hoped. I no longer have a manila folder for each of my courses that bulges with extra copies of everything I hand out in class; I pass out papers on the appointed day, and extras are recycled. Anyone who didn't get one on that day can find it on the Web site.

And I haven't opened my spiral grade book once; I've entered all grades this year into the Blackboard site. I can back up my Blackboard grades onto my computer, but of course the college backs them up as well.

But what has really sold me on this aspect of the system is the way it allows students to keep track of their grades over the course of the semester. The grading process and results, in my opinion, should be as transparent as possible, and Blackboard has made them even more transparent for my students this semester.

Creating Community

I thought Blackboard could help us prepare for our classroom discussions or continue them outside the classroom by posting to the Blackboard site comments and links and arguments that stemmed from our in-class discussions. We could alert each other to news stories that related to the works we had read, and even post links to songs and videos and Web sites.

In my "Introduction to Literature” course, I like to begin the poetry unit, which students often approach fearfully, by demonstrating that they listen to and think about a form of poetry all the time. So I play a popular rock song in class and throw the lyrics on the overhead, and we analyze them together. After that session, which went well, I returned to my office and set up a discussion thread on the Blackboard site inviting students to post any additional thoughts about the song or its lyrics, or about rock lyrics, or even to supply links to good audio versions or videos of the song.

Chirp. Chirp.

Hear those crickets?

That's the sound still coming from my Blackboard discussion threads designed to create community outside of class.

I have only myself to blame. A colleague had warned me that students generally will not post to the site unless you require it or reward them for it in some way. I didn't believe her, but she was right.

Fortunately, in my "Creative Nonfiction" class, I did require student participation on Blackboard. For a number of the papers they write, they have to post drafts on the site, and all students must offer a paragraph's worth of critique on two of the drafts posted by their peers.

That has worked very well. Students are logging on, reading the work of their peers, posting critiques, and getting feedback on their own work.

Part of me wishes that I didn't have to require it. Shouldn't students be so enthralled by Cormac McCarthy's novel The Road that they want to post about it? In a perfect world, I guess.

So I'm giving Blackboard a C here, but we are splitting it: Blackboard gets half for not building community in the way I had hoped, but I get half for not doing enough to entice students to join that community.

Making use of Multimedia

I had dramatic visions of how I would feature multimedia samples and links to what we were reading. So when we read W.H. Auden's "Musée des Beaux Arts," I would paste to the Blackboard site the painting it describes. When we read David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross, I would post clips from the film version. And when we read Joyce Carol Oates's "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?," I would post an audio file of the Bob Dylan song that partially inspired the story.

Blackboard gets no grade in this category. I, however, receive an F. I have done none of those things.

I haven't neglected to expose my students to those other works -- I photocopied the Brueghel painting and threw it up on the overhead, showed film clips of the movie in class, and played the Dylan song on a CD player I borrowed from the media center. Part of that resulted from a pedagogical decision on my part: I wanted students to see or hear the material in the classroom.

And since I'm in a technologically primitive classroom, I had no other way to bring the material in than through those older technologies. Once I had done that, I didn't take the additional time to post them to the Blackboard site as well. But I should have. Even if only one student goes back and listens to that Dylan song again, and it deepens her understanding of the story, it is probably worth the few minutes it would take me to post the link.

Documenting My Teaching

Although I have tenure, I still have one more promotion to apply for in my career. In addition, this academic year, the faculty members at my college were greeted with the news that we would be writing annual self-evaluations from here on out (hurray!). So I had the additional, and very modest, expectation that having my courses on Blackboard would aid me in compiling evidence for my self-evaluations and would allow me to transfer material for repeat courses more easily from one semester to the next.

Here Blackboard gets a B. It certainly does those things for me, and the more courses I put on Blackboard, the more that feature might save me time in the future. But I did those things myself already by saving all of my lesson plans, assignment sheets, and syllabi into folders on my computer, so I have always been able to find and copy the materials when I needed them.

What Blackboard does is put all of that material together with grades, student work, and the discussion boards, and that may prove an additional benefit that I had not anticipated.

Frequently I give assignments or do exercises in class that are ill-designed or go awry for some reason, and I usually make a mental note to change it the next time. Then a year goes by, and when I'm preparing for class, I look at the assignment I gave last year, and it looks brilliant to me, and so I hand out the exact same poorly designed assignment. Having a record of student work in response to those poor assignments should be a handy reminder of what worked and what didn't. (Assuming, that is, that I take the time to look back at the Blackboard site before I design the next version of the course.)

My final word on Blackboard's performance in my class thus far is mixed, then, but more positive than negative. It hasn't lived up to all of my expectations, but that has been in part due to my failings as a teacher. I need to become a better teacher in order to make Blackboard a better student.

James M. Lang is an associate professor of English at Assumption College and author of Life on the Tenure Track: Lessons From the First Year (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005). He writes about teachinghttp://www.jamesmlang.com. He welcomes reader mail directed to his attention at