Monthly Archives: December 2014

Lynda.com and Succeed

Lynda.com have released a building block for Succeed (Blackboard Learn 9.1). A building block provides for a tight integration between Succeed and a third-party product. The building block adds Lynda.com to the Succeed Mashups (like YouTube). The upshot is that it is very easy to search the huge amount of content available via Lynda.com and then add it to Succeed for your students to use.

A guide to using Lynda.com via Succeed has been prepared and is available here:

http://www.stir.ac.uk/media/schools/is/documents/succeeddocuments/adding_lynda_course_to_succeedModule.pdf

Listen Again Upgrade

The number of CPU cores available to process Listen Again recording is controlled by the licence purchased from TechSmith and we currently hold a 1-core licence. For next semester this should be upgraded to a 3-core licence — this does not change the time the server takes to deal with each individual recording but it does mean it can process 3 in parallel, effectively tripling performance.

The upgrade will mean that recordings are processed within 24 hrs unlike this semester when some recordings were taking almost 48hrs to get processed (unless there is huge increased in the number of recordings but evidence from previous years indicates only a modest uplift from autumn to spring semesters)

This change has no effect on how the software is used from teaching spaces/desktops.

Encouraging your students to fill in the MEQ

As the end of the Autumn semester approaches, chances are you’ll be wanting to make sure that your students complete their end-of-module feedback questionnaire, the Module Evaluation Questionnaire (MEQ). You have several tools at your disposal to try and ensure you get the maximum number of returns:

  • Remind the students to complete the MEQ via a course Announcement – see Creating an Announcement.
  • Remind just those students who haven’t completed it by email – find out who they are by going to the Grade Centre, locating the column associated with the MEQ and then looking for the double dash. This indicates no submission for that student. The green tick shows they have completed the MEQ, the blue clock shows they are in progress now (as shown below).

meq

  • Base the release of certain items in the module on the condition that the students have completed the MEQ (using Adaptive Release). This could include example past papers in the run up to the exam, or you could make the link to your Listen Again page dependent upon students having completed the MEQ. This video guide from Blackboard On Demand will show you how to set up Adaptive Release criteria:
    http://ondemand.blackboard.com/r9/movies/Bb9_Adaptive_Release_Create_Simple_Rule.htm

Finally, the guide on how you as a tutor access the MEQ data, download it from Succeed and run it through the specially developed Excel Add-In to produce a report in Word is available on the Succeed Help Pages:
http://www.stir.ac.uk/media/schools/is/documents/succeeddocuments/18_meq.pdf