There are many great interactive tools within Blackboard that can add interactivity, such as discussion boards, wikis, surveys, etc. There are also tools like this available on the Internet that you can include in your course. Tools that are Internet-based (reached through a browswer not from a program on your hard drive) and that allow users to interact with content and other people are called Web 2.0 tools.

Web 2.0 tools are very powerful tools for garnering student engagement, but they should be used only when there is a compelling reason and they support the learning objectives for a given lesson.

For your course, you may elect to use Web 2.0 tools or not. If you are new to Blackboard or tend to feel overwhelmed by all the options that technology presents, you can certainly stick with the tools that Blackboard offers and create a very compelling, engaging course with them. For those who want to explore Web 2.0 tools in more depth, a listing of tools is presented below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLlGopyXT_g

Source: Dr. Michael Wesch; all rights reserved

Embedding Content

One thing to keep in mind with online course content is that the more you can keep students "in the course," the better. Displaying content in your course framework, rather than sending students out to another program or another website, will help preserve the context and minimize distractions.

Here are a few ways you might do this. First, if you are creating content to share with students, create a page (Item) for it rather than putting it in a Word document or other file.

If you need to attach a local file, consider displaying it within the page rather than going out to an external file. (When adding content, Attach Local File -> Special Action -> Display Media within the Page.)

Finally, if you are including a web-based video (e.g. YouTube), PowerPoint, or Web 2.0 tool, look for an embed code and embed it into your Blackboard page. (To do this, copy the embed code, edit your page, go to the HTML source mode in the toolbar <>, put your cursor at the correct point, paste the code in, and leave the HTML source mode. You might want to try this once in one of our f2f practice sessions.)

Here is an example of an embedded PowerPoint (from Slideshare). Much nicer than sending students out to PowerPoint, which they may not even have!

http://www.slideshare.net/jrhode/blended-course-design

Source: _____________