So, the point is to help you with permissions in batch? if you sync BBoard the idea is that entire rosters can have permission without having to set them student by student? That would be handy!!!!

Does that require integration with BBoard or can you get that roster information from somewhere else?

I doubt those kind of permissions really matter to students. They just want to share and have a copy of the classnotes/docs….

Thanks for your feedback.

Cheers,

Michael

I need to find out more about this project.

Thanks for your thoughtful response and for bringing in new information that sheds light on your undertaking.

First, congrats on seeing real results. Data speaks for itself.

Some more thoughts:

1) Reducing additional logins always increases conversion. Single sign-ons are worth the headache.

2) Google Docs and Sites can be powerful pedagogical tools. They promote a collaboration unseen in other mediums, and I promote their use. Docs, in particular, produces a sort of normative reflection that forces each individual to understand their unique perspective vs. fundamental information and normative interpretation. Automatically loading the rosters into Docs, Sites, Calendars is great because, again, it just reduces the barriers to participation.

3) You are correct in that instructors seek to “recycle” materials, and if their students are collaboratively producing these materials, that’s powerful. I’d like to hear more about this kind of “crowdsourced” material production. Do you have a blog? please post here….

I’m glad that you’re reducing barriers to using new and powerful forms of technology, and I’m glad you’ve shed some light here.

At Inigral, we have to think about “integrations” all the time, and we put a lot of ideas in the “no” pile, because we can’t do everything. Easy login and complete rosters, though, is something we believe is a foundation. Past that foundation, we seek to create new information and messages that will impact student engagement and belonging, and a bit of learning as well.

Stay in touch. Drop your social media presences and we’ll follow you in the social media ether.

All the Best,

Michael Staton

The technical bit is this: our software allows instructors to link documents, sites, and calendars to their BB course sites. Once linked, students are added to those documents, sites, and calendars as full collaborators. They can also access those documents, sites, and calendars from Blackboard without logging in to Google. There are several important consequences of this capability:

1. The Blackboard environment tends promote the siloing of content in course sites rather than supporting flexible re-use in different classes and contexts. Most instructors work this way in developing their courses — developing a collection of re-usable teaching and learning content, tools and patterns. By building teaching and learning and scholarly content in Google they can continue to develop those materials over time and link selected portions to any number of courses. conference sites, etc.

2. Google sites and documents provide a nice environment for students to collaborate on projects. This promotes a much more active style of learning — students learn history by doing historical research and creating an online site with their findings rather than just consuming what other people have written.

3. Use of Google opens up the possibility for involving “visiting” experts from outside the institution, or even collaboration between students and instructors at different institutions. In a sense, it makes it more possible to break down some of the barriers between those institutions.

4. As a tool builder, there are great opportunities to build plug-ins that are not locked in to one particular course management system.

You may argue that the real benefit is from Google Apps for Education, rather than our integration. But what we have learned is that making Google Apps much more convenient, providing a central hub (Blackboard) with which to attach collaboration spaces and course learning materials, and eliminating the second log-in, makes these kinds of use of Google Apps much more attractive to instructors.