Vista Bb—Getting started

Drexel is a major Blackboard client—I’ve heard us called a “flagship” Blackboard school—and what that means is that you will find that Bb Vista is ubiquitous and quite well supported here. Every Drexel course automatically has an accompanying Bb Vista course Website, which you can access via either one.drexel.edu or https://learning.dcollege.net (which may well be the way you are accessing this site). There are a number of templates you can choose, and you have some flexibility with the look and feel of your course, but the main piece of advice I’m going to provide is this:

You should get to know the folks at our Instructional Resources & Technology (IRT) Department’s Faculty Development Center (FDC): http://www.drexel.edu/IRT/faculty.html.

The FDC has an onsite home base on the first floor of the Korman Center. I think you will find the members of the FDC ready, willing, and able to provide you with assistance on all aspects of teaching through Bb Vista. And "teaching" is the key word here. Sure, it's great to learn to zoom around with a new technology, but we're teachers, and we are seeking educational applications for learning technologies, not just digital bells and electronic whistles. The IRT folks understand this.

In the Freshman Writing Program, of which I’m the director, we use a lot of communication tools in Bb Vista, especially the message board tool, Discussions. We have run several collaborative workshops with the FDC folks, with an FDC person talking about the tech and one of our folks talking about teaching applications. These techies do an outstanding job of helping you find pedagogical applications for the technologies. Basically, there is no need to fly blind when getting up to speed with Bb Vista at Drexel. The University provides faculty with many user-friendly resources through IRT, and you should take advantage of them.

Scott Warnock