In this episode, Abi Moser returns to discuss the Office of Blackboard Support here at the University of Arkansas. We discuss how Blackboard Support can help online instructors and their students.

Email bbhelp@uark.edu

Call (479) 575 HELP (4357)

Visit bbhelp.uark.edu

Audio file

Blackboard Support_mixdown.mp3

Transcript

With Halloween just around the corner, I've been revisiting some of my favorite scary movies.

Today on the pedagogy toolkit, Abi Moser joins us to talk about who you turn to when things get scary in your blackboard course.

So Abi you.

Oversee, manage.

So you manage the blackboard support team

What can

an instructor expect when they call in. What should they e-mail or call in for? Because there are lots of ways to reach.

You at this point.

Yes, So we help.

Both faculty and students, right? So we.

Often we have instructors that will tell their.

Students just reach.

Out to Blackboard they can fix everything.

We would love.

To be those humans. Oh, my gosh, wouldn't that be?

Great. But also we.

Aren't going to make changes to instructors courses without their permission, right?

If we did that, we would have students calling us every day saying, Oh no, no, professor Jones told me that I could take the test tomorrow. Can you have set up that extension?

We can't do that.

Because they would take advantage of us. So we always ask instructors anytime they want us to make changes, anything that we can help with that it comes from the instructors, University of Arkansas account so that we don't have somebody that comes to us and says why did you make this change in my course and we say no we got.

An e-mail from you and they say.

That's that's a Gmail account. Anybody could have created that. You know I'm. I'm Joe Jones. This was Joe under score Jones, right.

So we want to make all kinds of changes for instructors and we will totally help them.

Do that, but we have to.

Have real clear valid.

Authentication that it's from an instructor.

So the things that will help students with and by all means tell your students to reach out to us. They can e-mail us. It's just B help like boy, boy, help@uw.edu. They can do a chat, they can.

Call us all the.

Things like we can help students turn in their work. We can help them record things. We can help them, you know, restart their computer because again, be the expert in your world and just tell your students to try turning it off.

And on again.

Because that is.

The answer to over 75% of all IT issues.

Right. So we can help them with so many technical aspects.

We will have students so that will call us.

And say.

I need help creating this thing. What should I do? Should I do a PowerPoint? Should I do this and?

We have to.

Say that's more up to how your instructor wants to do that work. So as long as we can look at something in Blackboard and say, oh, your instructor posted an example of this, did you see this under this tab and they go?

Oh my goodness.

I forgot that they have the.

We love it whenever we can just help them find a thing again. We want it to be organized well enough that students can find it for themselves, but sometimes they get into the weeds and they get. They get nervous about.

The project and.

They don't scroll right? It's not that they're not looking for it, but they're.

Frantic, they are stressed and they need an extra set of eyes. Looking at things will totally help students do that.

Now for instructors.

We want.

To teach you to.

Fish. But we will also give you.

A fish in an emergency.

OK, so if you have a test that's coming up in an hour and you need somebody to do the.

Test availability exceptions for that.

Test right?

And you need.

You forgot that you had a CEA student in that class that has an hour and a half to do the test instead of an hour.

We don't ever want a student to suffer because you're driving somewhere.

And you needed help, right?

So we'll ask you, hey, I'm going to make all these notes. Can you send me an e-mail real quick from?

Your York account so I can verify that it's really the instructor asking me to do this, but then we'll go in and make that change for you and we'll send you instructions on.

How to do it next time?

Right.

So we aren't the person that you call and say, hey, you want to create a test for me. That's not what we do. We will help you create a test, but.

We really want.

To teach you that.

Instead of just giving it to you.

You know, sometimes that can get complicated, but in general most people, because again, this is a learning institution, we very rarely come across anybody that says I never want to learn how to do.

Any of this, they say, hey, I'm.

Real rushed, can you?

Help me do it this time and explain to me while you while you're doing it what?

We're doing.

And we love that color. So we want.

People to reach out to us.

Early in their process, right?

I tell this to students and tell us the fact.

15 minutes should be about the time limit on how long you look for the answer for something.

If you're Googling for longer than 15 minutes, you probably just don't have the right word, and once you get the right word or that basic description of what you're looking for, Oh my goodness, you'll find so many articles, we probably have an article you just don't know exactly what it is you're looking for yet, right? If you're creating a test and you want students to get.

You know, 50 questions based on a a group of 100 questions. You may not know that that's called a question.

Right. That's just something that once you know it, you go oh, OK. It's a question pool.

Fine, but you didn't.

Know how to.

Google that so.

15 minutes for you and your students before you call us. I want people to look things up.

And learn because it's.

Always more satisfying, I think whenever you find the answer for yourself.

But also call us because it could be a two second phone call.

Instead of a four hour Google.

And we all have busy days. So 4 hours is a long time and people will call us saying I've been working on this all.

Weekend, we say.

Why? Ohh, honey. No, we.

We're here on the weekend.

Well, I know I.

Just didn't want to bother you and well.

What do you? That's what we get paid for. Come on.

Sweetie, get paid to be bothered.

Yeah, it's not a bother. It's honestly, especially whenever you're asking the question you're asking, it's a really easy one that makes me feel really satisfied in my job.

Right. And please as you've solved.

Which let me answer that, yes.

The problem that you had the answer to.

I I also love whenever somebody calls and it's something we haven't seen before and we kind of get to go on a little journey of discovery together.

Right.

I say, oh, I have never been asked that question before and somebody go well. I love being special and new.

And I say.

Well, we're going to do a lot of experimenting today. Say, how long do you have to do this to say about 10 minutes and say, well, we're not going to experiment together. I'm going to experiment and.

You're going to go teach.

Your next class and I will.

Send you an e-mail with some possible answers.

So everybody comes at things with different needs, different expectations of time.

I will say we're pretty fast on our turn around on things, but it is still humans we are.

Sadly, guys that the AI has not taken over the blackboard.

Support world we.

Are just human sitting at computers helping you?

Out so sometimes there is a.

Delay and we are grateful for that delay because we know we will get a correct answer when.

You send.

This is very much the goal.

So we try especially with something new, we'll test.

It you know over.

We'll go into one of our little sandbox courses and we'll play with it and see. Can we break it? If you reach out to us and?

Say this isn't working.

In my class, we aren't just going to go.

Oh well, that's not great. We're going to. We're going to try to make it break in other ways, so that's not always going to be a 2 minute turn around on something we're going to reach out to Blackboard. We're going to reach out to our administrators, we're going to test it. We're going to look at all the articles you may.

End up getting an e-mail from us that just goes. Yep, that's broken.

And hopefully it'll be fixed soon, but trust us, we tested 100 things before you got the e-mail. That said, Yep, you found a broken thing. But we'll also say here's an option for how you could work around that used to be my middle name, work around to add the workaround. Moser.

We try and not actually solve the problems instead of just having workarounds, so that's the new step in blackboard that we actually tell them about an issue instead of just living with it and making the best of it.

It's been a change.

Oh my goodness, that has lots.

Of fun right there.

Things have changed this.

Is also part of the blackboard helped us to experience right. This started out as we just realized at the university that there was nobody that was just doing Blackboard right. There's and most universities don't.

Have that at all.

We get calls all the time.

From students at other universities.

Calls from instructors at other universities that don't have any support. They they have their IT and somebody can help them, you know, download Microsoft 360.

Microsoft 365.

I don't know either. Somebody will help them download the software to their computer, but they don't have anybody that can help you.

With any specifics and so.

We have students and instructors call us from all over the country all over the world that find our articles and say.

Oh, here is the expert in.

How to add a kaltura video to a discussion board post and they?

They need a little bit of extra.

Help. So we're.

Pretty lucky at the university that they listened whenever we said that we needed.

A help desk for this.

And been around for a while now and.

People just kind of.

Expect that that's a help desk that exists.

And they'll go to other universities, and that support isn't there.

You know there isn't an entity like Global Campus that's helping somebody develop their online courses. There isn't a robust help desk system that is responsive to them.

Well, and also people have to keep in mind that while you all are very available on a regular basis during the crunch time, the end of semester finals, we, you know, they get very, very busy. So try to take care of your things ahead of time. It's not always, you know, it doesn't always work out that way.

Right.

Sometimes there are emergencies beyond our control, even if we have the best laid plans and organization systems.

But if you can try to get to them ahead of time because it does get harder in those little crunchy times. Yes, because everyone stuff is breaking right then, and it's all an emergency because everyone's making finals.

And it is, it is all an emergency.

And 365 for the record.

Awesome. Thank you.

And one thing that I will say.

That helps instructors.

Is thinking about when those busy times are right. Sometimes you can't help but a final exam is when a final exam is.

Until the last second.

Right.

And we're here for.

Support, but the default date when things are due in Blackboard.

Is Sunday at end of day, so a lot of instructors will keep that as their default date. So if there is one class that has.

Issues is full.

Right. So they call and.

There's just one of us working.

Most of the time, so if we're on.

The phone with the student.

That's the person we're able to help at that moment. So if you give them that cushion so that you say it's due at 8:00 Blackboard support is there until midnight. So if you have an issue, you know, we can still do things, but they're here all day Sunday.

Let's make sure we get our work turned.

In before 8, right so.

You can tell your students.

It's due at.

8 and keep it open until midnight.

But they the due date is 8.

O'clock and anything.

After that is late, but they can still.

Turn it in.

Right. So they can still have that support, but they know when they're supposed to.

Do it.

Do that for yourself as well As for your students, because as humans, we procrastinate. It is not that somebody's a bad human because they waited till the last minute.

It's just how people's brains.

Work we we wait until we get that push. It's the same with getting the zero in the grade center. If you don't have that thing pushing you, a lot of people don't have that. Like, I've got to do it right now feel until they've got to do it right.

Now Blackboard support is.

For students, the thing I say to them consistently is.

We are your ally, not your alibi.

We will have students that try.

To use Blackboard as the excuse for why.

Things couldn't be done.

Now, I won't deny that sometimes the Internet is not your friend.

Right.

Recently there have been DNS server attacks and different systems have had to reset and that means that from people's computers have had to reset all kinds of things that are the trickle down of.

Internet bad news.

Right.

But that's why we try to encourage people not to procrastinate, so that if that issue occurs, whenever you only have an hour left to take a test, there's not a lot we can do about that. Right. So we try to encourage people to take things ahead, work ahead, can't always do that. But Blackboard will serve as an.

Ally for you with your instructor.

If you reach out.

To us and say, hey, it's two hours till my test is due. I'm trying to log in. It's not working. We say you're right. Blackboard and the Internet in general are having a bad time right now.

We will. If you'd like. We can reach out to your instructor and include you on that e-mail so that they know that you did contact us and that this was the issue.

That was occurring.

Right. Sometimes that's all you need. And we can say keep trying because your instructor does have a deadline. We can't say that your instructor will take this e-mail to mean that you get to do this test another day, but we are there to be the person that says yes, the student was trying to access it. They were doing their best.

There was nothing we could do to resolve it.

At that moment.

But just so you know, here's all the information we have.

The thing that we aren't going to be is an alibi because students will try to pretend like they contacted us, or that blackboard was broken, or that, you know, the Internet was particularly cursed for them that day.

We log things, we can see how much a student is doing in Blackboard. We can see all of their clicks and blackboard.

Right.

So if student says no, I tried to take quiz one and starter will come to us and say did they try to take quiz one and we say we're not doing the week that it was open. So I I I don't know if maybe they looked at it the week before the week after but definitely not the week they could take it.

So we have students will try to do.

That so big part of that is we're an ally for it. We're not an alibi. You can't say that blackboard ate your homework. There's.

The blackboard isn't hungry in that way. If you turn it in and you get the verification e-mail, then it's turned in.

It just isn't what Blackboard.

Does Blackboard is hungry not for your.

Homework. It's hungry for knowledge, but not.

For stealing your.

Papers not for so.

We, you know, we have to do those trainings for. We remind students that, you know, you got to give space for yourself on Blackboard. You don't turn in papers and immediately close your.

All of those things wait until you get verifications of things. Same with instructors when you add.

New material make.

Sure, you wait until you see it's on the page before you don't, you know, completely exit out, maybe refresh it, make sure it's loaded properly. All those kind of things, good Internet.

It's just.

Not etiquette Internet.

Skill usage.

Skill usage.

Skills. What up with the Z? Yeah.

Skills is a small with AZ.

Isn't even from. Is it even like a thing?

Please do not drop the.

Mic. This is very expensive. Do not do not drop.

The mic only have three men.

There were three things about supporting students through Blackboard that instructors needed to know what would those three things be?

The first one is that organization. For me, it's all organization all the time. Delete what you don't use tidy up what you do have. Make it so clear to students where things are.

It will help you. It helps us as long as you keep them up to date on where things are. They won't have as much need for support, right? That is the built in support. That's the structural support within the class that makes it easier for them to succeed.

Right. So first thing, organization, second thing that you are keeping them.

Up to date on how they're doing.

Right. So that means going back to that timely.

Feedback that our RSI.

Ohh so close.

That goes back to the RSI that whenever they don't do work, when they do work, whenever you are grading that, they know how things are going at that moment, they never feel lost on what's expected of them in the class.

Right. So we're organizing, we're giving them consistent feedback. And the last thing for me is to try to understand where they're coming from, right? Giving them that real. I'm a real human. You're a real human. This is the kind of troubles we're going to experience. This is the kind of joys we're going to experience.

That goes into all of that, giving them the videos, giving them the.

Giving them the understanding of how work is going to be done, especially when we're talking.

About non traditional.

Students, right, even traditional students, have weird schedules, right? So we have to build that into our conversations. The way that we build our.

Courses that we say.

I know that this test is going to be a big one and I know that this week is huge.

So I'm going to make sure that this test is open for 24 hours of.

Access instead of one hour of access.

Whatever it is that you've got going on that you can be responsive with your students is going to make a huge difference to them and it makes them better students. It gives them more comfort in your class. They're going to learn better in your class because the goal isn't for them to learn how to access Blackboard and learn how to do the technology.

That you're giving them, right? That's always so a good thing, you know, learning to use zoom helps them in the future, but the goal is for them to learn, learn the course material. It's not to learn the technology.

So you can always.

Make that easier for them by planning ahead organizing, giving them that feedback, and being understanding of how they're accessing all of your material.

So when there's something strange in your blackboard course, who you gonna call? Blackboard Support.

A huge thank you to Abi for taking time to talk with us about Blackboard support and all its new services. Thank you for joining us today on the Pedagogy toolkit. Don't forget to subscribe.