In an effort to improve academic collaboration between students and professors, Northwestern University Information Technology is developing new software to integrate web-based applications from Google into Blackboard.
The software, called Bboogle, connects Blackboard with the Google Gmail-supported u.northwestern.edu. The u.northwestern.edu accounts replaced the old WebMail service in 2007 and allow NU users to compose e-mails, make calendars, collaborate on documents and create Web pages.
These new improvements to Blackboard are likely to go live over the course of this academic year. A small group of instructors have volunteered to test the Google applications on Blackboard, said Jonathan Smith, a software architect in the Academic and Research Unit of NUIT.
Thus far, Google’s suite of applications has been warmly embraced, said Geraldo Cadava, assistant professor in History.
“The (technology) is fantastic…and it’s very easy to use,” he said.
Many NU students use Blackboard to check grades, submit assignments electronically and retrieve course documents. The partnership with Google promises to make collaborating on assignments through Blackboard easier, as students can communicate with each other as well as their professors in real time, Smith said.
The Bboogle project is being tested in 30 different NU courses, ranging from Spanish language to Latin American history, Smith said. Professors have the option of utilizing three Google applications: docs, calendars and sites. The docs platform allows students and professors to create, edit and share word documents, spreadsheets and slideshow presentations, while the calendar function enables instructors to manage a course agenda for students to view. Even students without coding experience can create their own web pages for classmates to view and edit through the Google Sites application.
Cadava said he has already incorporated Google Sites into his course on 20th century Latino history. Each week, he appoints two students as class “editors,” who assign their classmates research on a person, event and concept. Students post their three, 100-word summaries to the course’s Google web site. At the end of the quarter, Cadava said, his students will have compiled hundreds of articles into his “online encyclopedia.” Information on anything from Cuban national hero José Martí to Puerto Rican immigration to America will be available at students’ fingertips, he said.
“Google Sites is the perfect platform for group work,” Cadava said. “It’s a great way for students to be able to work on projects together and…build something together.”
Posting work publicly could also provide an added incentive for students to turn in quality work, said Bettina Hessler, a fifth-year graduate student who uses Google Sites in her six-student seminar on immigration to the United States.
“It’s a good way to get students actively involved in doing something,” she said. “Students can (create) something and actually show the results of their work to other people.”
Course instructors can also use the new technology to connect their students to professors from other colleges and universities.
“(This integration with Google) allows classes to be open to the world,” Smith said. “You can collaborate with (professors) from other institutions or around the globe, rather than having everything within the classroom.”
