Navigate 3.1.3 – Tools within the LMS Quest

Looking through the blogs there are many common features similar to the ones seen below. They can be used to help the teacher and learner communicate and be organized.

In addition, there are student tools available. These tools allow the learner to become an active participant, upload documents, track progress, and reflect on his or her learning. 

The teacher's gradebook options are similar to online gradebooks that teachers have in the regular classroom. They have many features. 

When creating my course in blackboard there were some features that were similar. The management tools are shown below.

Under Course Tools there were a multitude of options.

• Achievements
• Announcements
• Blogs
• Contacts
• Course Calendar
• Course Messages
• CourseSites Live
• Date Management
• Discussion Board
• Glossary
• Goals
• Journals
• McGraw-Hill Higher Education
• Rubrics
• SafeAssign
• Self and Peer Assessment
• Send Email
• SoftChalk - Synchronize Copied Content
• SoftChalk Publish with ScoreCenter
• Tasks
• Tests, Surveys, and Pools
• Wikis
• WileyPLUSlive 

As a beginner, this was overwhelming, but as I have time to experiment, I am sure that I will find these useful. I believe that any of the tools that promote discussion are very useful. I think online learning can feel a little lonely at times so having blogs, discussion boards, journals, and live interaction tools are important. 

I also like the multitude of ways to assess the learner to make sure that they are grasping the knowledge. In addition, having ways to reflect on the learning is equally important, so I think I would use the journals, goals, and self and peer assessment tools.

There are some items that seem to be a nice feature, but I may not use as much such as the glossary and the McGraw-Hill Higher Education. It is nice to have these around though. The glossary allows you to add words to help the learner, and the McGraw-Hill Higher Education is is a web-based assignment and assessment platform.

Something else interesting about Blackboard is you can hide the tools from the students that you don't want them using. For the lab safety class, I chose to give the students only the tools I felt they needed to be successful.

As far as the gradebook, it is a pretty standard online grading tool. Once the students log in they show up in the teacher's gradebook.

It does allow you to have some create calculated columns based on the following features:

• Average Column
• Minimum/Maximum Column
• Total Column
• Weighted Column

In addition, it has some management tools.

• Grading Periods
• Grading Schemas
• Grading Color Codes
• Categories
• Smart Views
• Column Organization
• Row Visibility
• Send Email
• WileyPLUS Grade Refresh
• McGraw-Hill Connect To Do List
• McGraw-Hill Connect Reports

Obviously, some are unnecessary, but is always nice to have options. I would organize using the grading period, but I may skip color coding and organizing. It does give you the option to run SCORM reports.  SCORM Reports can gather selected users' total time spent, status and result of a SCORM package. I think this is nice documentation for a teacher. In addition, there are many other reports you can run. The course site also send you reminders when things need grading which is a nice feature especially if you were managing many classes.