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Earlier this month I made my annual pilgrimmage to Durham to attend the 16th Durham Blackboard Users' Conference . I've been attending this event every January for the last number of years and can honestly say that it's a highlight in my calendar. Even better that it's at the very, very start of the year, meaning I'm not missing too much activity at work, and I can focus my mind completely on the theme of the conference. Moreover, the annual Durham event is one of the best organised, consistently enjoyable and useful, and the friendliest Ed Tech conference. If Carlsberg did conferences! This is mostly down to the amazing team behind it all, including Malcolm Murray, Julie Mulvey and the Learning Technologies Team at Durham University. If you are a Blackboard customer in the UK or Ireland (or considering becoming one), you should not miss this annual event. Because it's a Users' conference, it does not have the corporate feel of, say, the Blackboard Teaching ...

This is a brief report from the Blackboard Education on Tour event which took place in Dublin last week, on Tuesday 4th November. First of all, I'd like to mention that the Irish user community really appreciated that Blackboard included Dublin in its tour, making it so much easier for us to attend. It was good to see such a great turnout from various Irish Institutions. The programme for the day included 2 tracks: Product Discussion and Professional Development. I'd have loved to get to some of the Professional Development sessions, but because I was the only one from NUIG, I decided to stay in the Product Discussion track. The event was opened by Demetra Katsifli who welcomed everybody to the event and spoke about Blackboard's development priorities for the EMEA region and some specific examples of where Irish/UK requests have influenced product design. The big one here is delegated and anonymous marking, which is starting to be addressed in the April 2014 release. She ...

Earlier this year I presented, with two student co-presenters, a session at the Blackboard Teaching and Learning Conference (BBTLC) , which took place in UCD in Dublin. The presentation was based on a project that I've been involved in, along with the students, to develop a campus mobile app for students, based on the Blackboard Mosaic platform. The interesting thing about the project was that the project was entirely initiated, driven and implemented by the students. My co-presenters, Fionn Delahunty and Darren Kelly, are both first year undergraduate students at NUI Galway. Fionn intends to major in Psychology, while Darren is a student of Biomedical Science. Neither would describe themselves as particularly technical. But they are now at the point of launching the first official mobile app for NUI Galway students. The film crew at BBTLC The students were excited to be going to BBTLC, which fell at an awkward time during their first year exams. Blackboard, the company, had shown ...

A few weeks ago I attended the Blackboard Teaching and Learning Conference, which took place at University College Dublin. Both David Hopkins ( day1 , day2 and day3 ) and Sheila MacNeill ( here and here ) have already blogged about the event. I know I'm quite late, but I thought I'd get a few thoughts down before I forget altogether. This was the first Blackboard Europe event that I have attended in some time. In general, I find the Durham Blackboard Users' Conference more useful and better value. This year I decided to go, for a couple of reasons: It took place in University College Dublin (where I studied Science as an undergrad many years ago), which made travelling so much easier. Also, I could stay with my Mum and have a little quality time with her. I had been encouraged to submit a proposal on our Explore project with Mosaic , which was accepted. So I was able to present with my two (undergraduate student) co-presenters, Fionn Delahunty and Darren Kelly. More on t...

cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo shared by sharonlflynn The Blackboard Mobile User Group met on Monday afternoon, 7th January, as part of the 13th Durham Blackboard Users' Conference . The meeting was organised by Peter Rayment, Learning Technology Manager at Cardiff University, and attended by about 20 people from higher education around the UK. I was the only person from an Irish institution. The meeting took place in the impressive new Palatine Centre (see picture), which houses the Law School at Durham University. We started by going round the room, each person giving a brief introduction and describing the current status of Blackboard Mobile ( Learn and/or Central ) at his/her institution. We launched Mobile Learn at NUI Galway at the end of March 2012, at the end of teaching and just 4 weeks before the start of exams. With a promising initial take-up, we were interested to monitor its use during the teaching semester starting in September 2012. Three weeks into term...