How can students use the Blackboard Mobile Learn app on their iPad?

With the arrival of new technologies there is always the questions posed by higher education, “what could it do for us”? Blackboard Inc, the makers of the course management software we use at Purdue, has created a mobile application that allows students to access their courses using a tablet device and/or smart phone. Since the introduction of Blackboard Learn at Purdue, the application gained attention from faculty who are curious of its capabilities and limitations, there is an overview of what has been tested.

The Review

Note on testing the app: Two Educational Technologists, Chris Callahan and Ben Holmes worked together to test the app. Ben supplied a demo course and Chris took on a student role in the course and wrote what he experienced using the app with the course in this review.

Announcements- The course came with an announcement already put into place, which was posted by ITaP with an automatic caution message setup to warn of not using an iPad or any other mobile devices for taking assessments. It popped up correctly and could be closed without issue. A review on assessments completed using an iPad is provided below.

Screenshots are shown below.

Course Content-

• A video: Once the popup appears it asks students to “View in Browser”, which means once they click it another popup with content appears, in this case the page containing the video. The new popup shows a small video thumbnail and once clicked it displays the video. A student can use touch gestures to enlarge its view, use the enlarge button on the top left of the popup to make it larger or even close the video. Sometimes, the video takes a while to load. When this review was written, only a white outlined rectangle was visible. If the video is closed (by clicking on the top right part of the video thumbnail), the student is returned to the course in the traditional browser view of course content, which is easier to see if the popup is enlarged.

Screenshots are shown below.

• A PowerPoint: Another Popup shows. If a student clicks “View in Browser”, it will take him/her to the traditional browser view on course content. From the desktop browser view a student could zoom in and click the attachment that opens the PowerPoint file. Instead, there is another link under the section attachments in the popup that links directly to the PowerPoint file. By clicking on this, the PowerPoint slides appear in a popup and you can view the slides as a static vertical list of images (static meaning no animations or transitions are shown in this view).Screenshots are shown below.

  

• Test for Chris: Ben created a test that contained two types of questions, one as a multiple choice and the other was a calculated formula, which contained two variables. Once the link was clicked, this text was displayed: “Unfortunately, this test is not mobile compatible because it includes unsupported question types or settings. We recommend you take this test in a PC [or non-mobile] browser. Check out our help section in the Settings area to learn more about test compatibility”- as shown in the screenshot below. Thus I’m guessing the calculated formula which was simply a two variable calculation “[x] times [y] equals” is what caused this test to be unavailable on the Mobile Learn app.

Screenshots are shown below.

• An Assignment: Once clicked a popup appears that shows a form field for submitting a sentence or a “View in Browser” button. The “View in Browser” button, once clicked returns us again to the traditional browser view and shows us the assignment submission page. If the student clicks on “Browser My Computer” the only thing this activates are two options “Take Photo or Video” or “Choose Existing”. Thus, it is assumed it is not possible on a default iPad to upload any other type of documents, such as Word docs or PDFs. Alternatively, a student could click on “Browser Content Collection” and then have to click on the “My Content” link on the left to get to their saved documents on Learn.

Screenshots are shown below.

• Alternative, using Dropbox: There is a built in plugin that allows students to submit documents into the course’s assignments using Dropbox. They must click on the settings button and provide the login to be able to access these documents. Apparently the Dropbox login will only last as long as the student is logged into Mobile Learn, so they would need to provide their credentials again when they open the app after powering on their iPad. However, when I went back to the Assignment page and clicked on Browse My Computer, no button/link appeared that would allow Dropbox documents to be uploaded.

Screenshots are shown below.

Media Gallery- Once the link is clicked, a popup is shown and provides the “View in Browser” button. This takes the student to the traditional browser view. This view presents students with two video thumbnails, the video player (shown on the right of the third screenshot) which automatically plays the first video shown in the list. When this video player was clicked, it played normally. Also, I had no problem skipping around in the video or adjusting other settings, such as the video size.

Screenshots are shown below.

Discussions- A simple, effective setup which allows the student to view each forum > thread> and messages in a linear fashion. It is easy to add new forums, threads, and messages (depending on permissions given to the student). Nothing out of ordinary and seems to work as it should.

Screenshots are shown below.

My Grades- Another simple view for seeing grades, which lists the columns in the same order as they are shown in the traditional browser view of My Grades.

Student Help- Lists the same links that are shown on the “Student Help” page, except the descriptions are only shown in the popups of these links. By clicking on the “View in Browser” buttons of different popups, the student is shown a different page in a normal browser view; here is the list of what each one does:

• General Information about Blackboard Learn at Purdue
  • Takes student to the “General Information about Blackboard Learn at Purdue” Dashboard page on Confluence.

• Blackboard Support Documentation
  • Takes student to the “Blackboard Support Documentation” page from the official Blackboard Help page

• Support for Common Tasks
  • Takes student to the “Support for Common Tasks” or the traditional browser view for Learn “Student Help”

• Supported Browsers, Plugins and Operating Systems for Blackboard Learn
  • Take student to the “Supported Browsers, Plugins, & Operating Systems for Blackboard Learn Release 9” page on Blackboard Boards KB.

• On-Demand Learning Center for Students
  • Takes students to the “On Demand” Learning Center for videos on how to do certain tasks in Learn. By click on any of these videos’ “Watch it” links however, it is revealed that they are Flash-based, thus unless they go to page on a regular computer or flash-enabled device, these videos won’t play for the iPad.

• Purdue Library
  • Takes the student to the homepage of the Purdue Libraries.

Other features reviewed on the app

Top left search bar above links to courses- It only functions to find courses, but from what I found, it does NOT search for content inside courses.

Settings- Several options available, including “Notifications” “Link” “Dropbox” “Help” “Privacy” and “Logout”. Notifications are the messages the app sends an individual while they are on their iPad, Link Dropbox are the login options for connecting to the service, Help is a resource link to help with the apps’ functions, Privacy is information related to the apps conditions and uses, and Logout allows students to securely logout of the app.

Dashboard- Contains essentially information on what has changed in a course, such as content being added or edited, and announcements made by the instructor. Students can sort these dashboard notifications by date, type, and class.

Verdict on the app: After reading the review, students and instructors alike may have varying opinions of the usefulness of this app. Given that the app is licensed out by Blackboard through the Apple app store at $1.99 per year or $5.99 for life, the question students and instructors may be asking themselves is “Is it necessary to have this?”. Students can still interact with Learn through any mobile browser, which can present its own limitations given the screen size of the device and some mobile browser compatibility with Learn’s coding. Thus, if a student or instructor uses the app, it should be used mainly for viewing content and discussion boards. For Assessments, assignments, and adding content activities, it is our suggestion that these take place on either a desktop computer or laptop browser. Lastly, it is expected that this application will receive upgrades in the future that will provide noticeable improvements that fix the issues addressed in this review. Stay tuned in the coming months for any updates on our findings.