Where, Who and What?

Blackhawk Technical College-Central Campus

Where? Blackhawk Technical College

Blackhawk Technical College (BTC) is the 3rd smallest college out of the sixteen colleges in the Wisconsin Technical College System.

"The faculty, staff, and administration of Blackhawk Technical College...provide for the future of [the] community through excellence in technical education." The administration and instructors work tirelessly to offer programs that will lead to immediate employment, through face-to-face, hybrid and online courses. Their values of "Facing the future by promoting trust, diversity, teamwork and empowerment" are displayed through the commitment of the instructors and staff to help every student to be successful.

Blackhawk Technical College has 5 satellite campuses with programs including Early Childhood Education, Administrative Professional, Criminal Justice, HVAC/R, Health Occupations, Dental Assistant and Hygiene, an Airframe and Powerplant Mechanics School, Diesel and Heavy Equipment Technician and Automotive Technician program. Laboratory Technician Assistant, Clinical Laboratory Technician, Agribusiness Specialist and Medical Coding, Information Technology, general education, and community education courses and more. They also provide basic academic and GED/HSED instruction, remedial education, and classes for English Language Learners.

There are approximately 115 full-time faculty and 460 adjunct (part-time) faculty. This dedicated group of instructors played a major role in supporting the displaced workers when the GM and Lear plants closed in 2008.

I am on a committee to recommend policy and procedures to top administration for online learning. This is an area of growth for BTC and an interesting time to be in this position.

Who? BTC

Demographics: (Blackhawk Technical College Office of Accountability & Resource Development 2011).

These demographic charts show that the student body of credit courses at Blackhawk Technical College is quite homogeneous. The total number of BTC students represents a marginally wider range of ethnic diversity.

Nearly one-third (1/3) of BTC students come from an economically or academically disadvantaged background. The student body doubled in the past 2-3 years and the numbers are not dropping even though some of the stimulus money for displaced workers has run dry.

The faculty demographics are in line with the student body as the following charts depict. As you can see, full-time faculty make up only one quarter of all faculty. Most part-time faculty are working one or more jobs and are challenged to find time to get the support they need and deserve.

What? Blackboard Online Training Course

As mentioned above, BTC is growing in leaps and bounds and part of that growth is a drive to offer more online courses. This methodology not only help more students to secure their future but helps them to develop skills that areessential in the 21st Century. Instructors are encouraged to enroll in an online training before they actually teach an online course. More and more instructors are signing up for the 1/2 credit Introduction and Advanced courses we offer but many of our adjunct (and full-time) Instructors don't have the time.

Consequently, the goal of the course that I am developing is to serve these instructors.

BTC uses Blackboard as it's learning management system and in May 2010, upgraded from version 8 to Blackboard Learn version 9.1. This course will guide the instructor through a comprehensive training on Blackboard's interface and common tools. The training will be organized in modules in the following manner:

Module 1 - Background
Module 2 - Add Course Content
Module 3 - Communication
Module 4 - Groups
Module 5 - Assessments
Module 6 - Surveys
Module 7 - Web 2.0
Module 8 - Plagiarism and Academic Honesty
Module 9 - Utilities
Module 10 - Reflection

The four learning objectives are taken from Module 3 Discussions, Module 5 Assessments, Module 7 Web 2.0 and Module 8 Plagiarism and Academic Honesty.

Please click the navigation links, on the top left, to view each learning objective, the rubric, references and summary.