Simplifying I-Learn: What is I-Learn Good For?

By Jason Shaw and Arlen Wilcock

In case you haven’t heard about the results of last semester’s faculty survey regarding I-Learn, it generally received high marks on usage and low marks on satisfaction. Because of the nature of the product, our university is somewhat limited in our ability to “fix” I-Learn, but we can do some things to simplify the user’s experience. Last year Academic Council approved the formation of a faculty committee called FACIL (Faculty Advisory Committee for I-Learn) which includes one representative from each college. The members of this committee are:

• Jason Shaw (Agriculture and Life Sciences)
• Mike Whitesides (Business and Communication)
• Larry Thurgood (Education and Human Development)
• Scott Cameron (Language and Letters)
• Shawn Randall (Performing and Visual Arts)
• Evan Hansen (Physical Sciences and Engineering)
• Arlen Wilcock, Dean Allen, Orren Squires (Academic Technology)

The FACIL group is working to help simplify the user’s I-Learn experience through training, communication, and other means. So this is the first in a series of “Simplifying I-Learn” articles authored by instructors.

What is I-Learn good for? Why should I use it? If I don’t use I-Learn, what are my options?

I-Learn is a Learning Management System, the heart of which is a third-party product called Blackboard™, a Course Management System. Blackboard™ is a fairly robust system relative to other options on the market. And while there are competitive products (Angel™, Desire2Learn™, Moodle™, and Sakai™), Blackboard™ remains the market share leader. When faculty experience dissatisfaction with I-Learn, they often suggest that we move to a different Course Management System – and we will continue to look at that in the future. But it is important to realize that each alternative comes with its own costs and frustrations. Recent conversations with faculty serving in several other universities left no doubt that BYU-Idaho enjoys a relatively stable and user-friendly Course Management System.

As an instructor, if I didn’t use I-Learn, I would have two less-optimal choices:

1) Go back to manual distribution of paper copies. I would need to printout/photocopy and hand out my syllabi and other course materials. My students would also need to printout and then submit their assignments to me in class. I would need to sort, organize, grade, manage, and deal with the paper flow. Faculty who use I-Learn may still do a limited amount of this, but increasingly they are posting and receiving documents in I-Learn. Their students can access these materials anywhere they have internet access. These faculty no longer hear, “I lost my copy of the syllabus,” or “My printer broke.”

2) Learn how to create my own webpages. Some instructors at BYU-Idaho actually know how to do this. But most faculty members don’t know html programming or anything about web authoring, webservers, permissions, security, or posting and hosting of web documents. So it’s nice having a system that will do that for me. Moreover, students are increasingly familiar with the consistent interface and navigation of I-Learn and don’t need to relearn it from course to course.

Despite its imperfections, I-Learn can be a really powerful tool. It has a lot of features and capabilities. But faculty can also become frustrated if they use the resource without understanding it strengths and an awareness of its limitations. From our own experience, here are the Top Five features in I-Learn that will save you time and make your life easier:

• Announcements. It’s easy to post announcements to your students. These announcements show up on their main Welcome page even before they access your course. You can also place a file, web link or an image in the Announcements. This can be an excellent place to provide your students guidance as to how they might prepare for class.
• Email. You can easily send an email to an entire class or to selected students. This email goes to their regular BYUI email account – they don’t need to login to I-Learn to receive it. Students can also email each other within a class to facilitate communication on group assignments.
• Organizing content. One of I-Learn’s real strengths is the ability for instructors to post documents for their students to access. An instructor could typically post the syllabus, office hours, course calendar, readings, links to external sites, assignments, graphics, animations, and links to streaming video/audio content.
• Assignment submission. When a student completes an assignment, he can easily submit it to his instructor electronically from his apartment at 2am in his pajamas, or wherever, whenever.
• Assessing preparation. I-Learn’s ability to administer tests/quizzes makes it ideal for assessing preparation. Although online testing can also be used in the Testing Center for midterm and final exams, it is best used in a non-proctored environment for low-stakes testing.

Some of the frustration faculty experience comes when they try to move beyond the tools that they are confident using. If you are not already focusing on the above five features of I-learn, we recommend starting there. If you are thinking of moving beyond these five, we recommend that you:
Come to the Faculty Technology Center in the Library (Room 321) for training.
Visit one of the satellite I-Learn Service Centers (SMI, HIN, and SPO).
Access the online tutorials.

The Academic Technology office hopes to become an increasingly useful resource to faculty as they use I-Learn. Watch for our next two article in the series – “I-Learn Gotcha’s” (how to avoid common mistakes while using I-Learn) and “Simplifying Grade Center.”