Customer Reviews

Blackboard For Dummies

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Nice reference for blackboard but doesn't match with all versions of blackboard and unfortunately my college just upgraded this past year.

The review by Someone's Mom appears to contain some factual errors. The banner feature is discussed on pages 75 - 76. Creating a learning unit is discussed on pages 98 - 100. Whether these entries would satisfy the previous reviewer is another matter, but the topics are addressed. There may be other errors as well in that review, but these two just jumped out at me. I agree that the authors couldn't seem to decide whether they wanted to write a technical book about Blackboard or a book focused on pedagogy and the use Blackboard. Nevertheless, there is useful content in this book, particularly for someone who is new to the use of course management systems.

Extremely dated. Published in 1996. Imagine if you still had a computer from 1996- how useful would it be? I wish someone would update this book but as it stands now, it is useless with the current applications of Blackboard. It doesn't even mention the "Build, Teach, Student" format.

I'm a Blackboard system administrator, so I read this book looking for things that I would like for our faculty members to know. I thought it did a very good job of providing them with basic explanations of features and ideas for using those features. I also enjoyed the paragraphs from instructors who made comments and suggestions.

In purchasing this book, I had hoped to find methods of enhancing the blackboard program with graphics, multimedia, and other web-based and hyperlinked enhancements to make my course more interesting. I did not find these topics. What I did find was some helpful hints in navigating the blackboard system which is largely found in the all of the 'blackboard faculty guidelines'. For example, utilized the 'personal information tool' you can use most of the windows text enhancements like color bold, underline, etc.... but not mentioned in the book. Consider these topics for another edtion or book.

I found this book to be very helpful when I began teaching on Blackboard. Sure, it's incomplete as previous reviewers have noted, and Blackboard is constantly evolving, so this book may not have the latest/greatest bells and whistles, but it serves a solid purpose as an introduction to Blackboard.

Tim Warneka
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