{"id":505,"date":"2014-12-17T07:00:13","date_gmt":"2014-12-17T12:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/blackboard\/?p=505"},"modified":"2014-12-17T07:00:13","modified_gmt":"2014-12-17T12:00:13","slug":"the-center-for-teachings-new-role-with-blackboard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vanderbilt.edu\/brightspace\/2014\/12\/17\/the-center-for-teachings-new-role-with-blackboard\/","title":{"rendered":"The Center for Teaching&#8217;s New Role with Blackboard"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>by Derek Bruff, Director, Vanderbilt Center for Teaching<\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/cdn.vanderbilt.edu\/vu-wpfsx\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/133\/2014\/12\/CFT_Logo_No_dropshadow_two_color.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-506\" src=\"http:\/\/www.vanderbilt.edu\/blackboard\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/71\/2014\/12\/CFT_Logo_No_dropshadow_two_color-274x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"164\" height=\"180\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The Center for Teaching is taking on a significant new role in the educational technology landscape at Vanderbilt. <strong>Starting this spring, the CFT will coordinate and provide technical and pedagogical support for Blackboard<\/strong>,  Vanderbilt\u2019s course management system, known locally as OAK. Also, in  conjunction with Vice Provost for Learning and Undergraduate Affairs  Cynthia Cyrus and the OAK Faculty Advisory Committee, the CFT will lead  strategic planning for Blackboard and other potential platforms for  supporting teaching and learning at Vanderbilt.<\/p>\n<p>New roles often require new resources, and the CFT is now accepting applications for an <strong>Assistant Director for Educational Technology<\/strong>.  This new colleague will work with current CFT staff to help Vanderbilt  instructors understand the roles Blackboard and other platforms can play  in teaching and learning. \u00a0We anticipate hiring additional staff in  2015, which will allow the CFT to centralize Blackboard support across  most of campus. This new model, with multiple Blackboard specialists  housed at the CFT, should provide more robust support for Vanderbilt  instructors.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The roadmap for Vanderbilt\u2019s course management system looks promising.<\/strong> In late December, OAK\/Blackboard will move from Vanderbilt servers to  Blackboard servers, which should improve performance and reliability.  Faculty who find OAK useful but slow should look forward to their  Blackboard experience in January. Next summer, we plan to upgrade to a  newer version of Blackboard, which will likely have an improved user  interface and new tools for instructors. This spring, the CFT will seek  input from Vanderbilt faculty, staff, and students to guide upgrade  decisions. Faculty who have stopped using OAK because it didn\u2019t meet  their needs are especially invited to participate in this process and to  try out the new Blackboard late next summer.<\/p>\n<p>See <a href=\"http:\/\/cft.vanderbilt.edu\/2014\/12\/from-the-director-vanderbilt%E2%80%99s-course-management-system-and-the-cft\/\">my recent CFT blog post<\/a> for further information on the CFT\u2019s new roles with  Blackboard and related plans for enhancing educational technology  resources for Vanderbilt instructors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Derek Bruff, Director, Vanderbilt Center for Teaching The Center for Teaching is taking on a significant new role in the educational technology landscape at Vanderbilt. Starting this spring, the CFT will coordinate and provide technical and pedagogical support for Blackboard, Vanderbilt\u2019s course management system, known locally as OAK. Also, in conjunction with Vice Provost [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10847,"featured_media":506,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/cdn.vanderbilt.edu\/vu-wpfsx\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/133\/2014\/12\/CFT_Logo_No_dropshadow_two_color.jpg","ACF":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanderbilt.edu\/brightspace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanderbilt.edu\/brightspace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanderbilt.edu\/brightspace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanderbilt.edu\/brightspace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10847"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanderbilt.edu\/brightspace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanderbilt.edu\/brightspace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanderbilt.edu\/brightspace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanderbilt.edu\/brightspace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanderbilt.edu\/brightspace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanderbilt.edu\/brightspace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}