The Blackboard course that I developed was the culmination of a semester long project where we explored online learning. This happens to be my favorite project that I developed over the course of my masters work. I truly enjoyed learning how online learning management worked and how it can be used to facilitate mastery. This project was undertaken to teach students the other side of Blackboard, the instructor side. Over the semester we would add small parts to our shell of a course as we learned specific skills that contribute to online course creation.
The parts of the course started simple, introduction, syllabus, about me, student resources. However, as the course progressed we were required to develop timelines, curriculum, tests, reminders, formatives, wikispaces, and discussion board spaces for students. We also learned how to schedule within blackboard so that content would only be available at specific times.
The project resulted in an awesome awakening with me. Once I had a grasp of how to use an LMS to facilitate my instruction, I began using google classroom all the time with my students and their interactions with content and their mastery was much improved. I started to teach 21st century skills to 21st century students in a 21st century way. This specific project had an impact beyond the shell of a course that I created, and for that I am so thankful. It is exciting to use an LMS now as a way to promote learning.