Author: John Ramsay

Blackboard TLC and DevCon – Newcastle 2019

A rather sunny Newcastle was the destination for this year’s Blackboard European Teaching and Learning Conference.  The 4 day event, which was split into the DevCon and main TLC conference, took place in Northumbria University Business School.  We will be looking at some of the highlights from both events.

Blackboard DevCon

Welcome & No REST for the Wicked: The Latest on REST APIs in Blackboard Learn

DevCon 2019 kicked off with a welcome from Mark O’Neil and Scott Hurrey, they discuss the outline of this year’s DevCon, including events and tasks scheduled for the day and how they have had to improve the Developer Community to meet the demands of its users.

Durham Blackboard Users’ Conference 2018

In January I attended the Durham Blackboard Users’ Conference. This was the 18th running of the event by Durham University and the first I have attended. Each conference has a unique theme and this years was based on the classic Spaghetti western, The Good, the Bad and The Ugly. The two day conference featured a number of talks, demos and presentations highlighting what is good bad and ugly with Blackboard.

Before I cover some of the sessions, I have to say it was an exceptionally well run conference.  The team at Durham have put a great deal of work into not only the event, but the social aspect following the conference. 

Turnitin User Summit Review – 6/10/16

On Thursday 6th October, I attended the Turnitin User Summit in Newcastle.  The one day event consisted of short presentations from Turnitin representatives, guest speakers from UK HE institutions, a group workshop and a ‘knowledge bar’ which provided an opportunity to speak to a variety of people working at Turnitin. Before I discuss the event, here are some pictures from my time in Newcastle.

Newcastle, for those who have not been, is a Northern city (closer to Edinburgh than London) dominated by a number of bridges over the Tyne, a plethora of bars and clubs, an average football club and two very central universities (Newcastle and Northumbria). 

Incorporating Virtual Reality (VR) into Online Courses

This is a short blog post on the potential of using virtual reality (VR) content in e-learning courses. I recently attended the Learning Technologies Summer Forum at Olympia in London. This was the second Learning Technologies event that I have attended this year, following the conference & exhibition that took place in January.   Although I found the event slightly disappointing due to the lack of seminars, one area that stood out was the growing number of exhibitors demonstrating e-learning content through virtual reality headsets.  Furthermore, the exhibitors from Kallidus managed to win over the crowd by giving away free Google Cardboard before their seminar entitled ‘Getting started with VR: myths, realities and practicalities’ which you can download from this page.

Blackboard Learning & Teaching Conference 2016 Review

Groningen in the Netherlands recently hosted the 2016 Blackboard EMEA conference.  The three day conference was the biggest that Blackboard have held in Europe and featured over 420 delegates from 19 different countries.  Before discussing the conference, I must say that Groningen was a great location to hold the event.  It is a small picturesque town dominated by University of Groningen and surrounded by canals and ‘car free’ streets full of cyclists.  Furthermore, the town also hosted the fantastic ‘David Bowie Is’ exhibition and Blackboard delegates were given free access to this after hours.

I’ll now focus on some of the key events from the conference.

Learning Technologies 2016: Authoring Tools Review 4/2/16

by John Ramsay

On Thursday 4th February, I attended the Learning Technologies event at Olympia in London.  Learning Technologies is a showcase for organisations to demonstrate the latest advances in workplace learning and learning technology.  With over 140 free seminars over two days, I decided to focus my attention on the latest e-learning authoring tools to see if they offered a viable alternative to established products such as Adobe Captivate and Articulate Storyline.

The three main seminars that I attended were;

  • WMB: E-Learning is Dead!
  • eLB: Become an E-Learning Rockstar
  • Appitierre Ltd: Enabling Everyone to Create Multi-device E-Learning Content

You can find a short summary of each presentations below.

London Blackboard User Group Meeting Review – 31/07/15

Review by John Ramsay.

I recently attended the summer 2015 London BUG meeting at Regent’s University. The theme for the event was ‘Enhancing Blackboard with Plugins and Building Blocks’ and below are some of the key points that emerged from the meeting;

  • BbStudent app – coming soon
  • Blackboard Collaborate – Ultra Roadmap released
  • Turnitin: Next – new look for Turnitin
  • Bb roadshows in November 2015
  • 2015 Bb World slides- now available

I will now look at some of the key points from BUG in more detail.

Blackboard World and Ultra Updates

Ashley Wright from Blackboard started his presentation by speaking briefly about the recent BbWorld conference from Washington DC.