Corcoran Studio: Information About the Blackboard Tech Support Website at Heartland Community College

Goal of the Project

While working at Heartland Community College as the Media Technologist between 2007 and 2016 I was tasked with supporting the needs of faculty and students having issues with using the Blackboard Learning Management System. The college shifted over to using Blackboard in 2010 from the previous learning management system called WebCT. During this transition period I saw the need to build out a knowledge repository so others providing tech support for the college would have a single source of information to point users to pertaining to problems and solutions while using the Blackboard LMS.

This website design was to fulfill the need for a sharable knowledge base for tech support issues campus wide for both faculty and students.

Project Specs

Category

• Handout Design
• Icon Design
• Screen Recordings
• Web Design
• HTML/CSS/Javascript Development

Software Used

Audience

• Heartland Community College Online Faculty
• Heartland Community College Online Students

Solution to the Problem

Seeing the need for a single source of information with which I could share solutions to commons problems being reported from both a student perspective and an instructors viewpoint, I decided to take the initiative to design and create a website during the Summer 2010 semester at Heartland Community Colllege dedicated to Blackboard Learning Management System Tech Support. I used Adobe Illustrator CS3 and Adobe Photoshop CS3 to design the wireframing and mockups along with all of the graphic elements of the site. This website is a fixed width design as it was created in 2010 just at the beginning of the technique known as responsive design. The HTML, CSS and JavaScript were all hand written using Notepad++ text and source code editor to build out this web site.

In addition to the design of the website, I created all of the text content, screen recording videos and handouts used on the web site. I maintained this website between its creation in 2010 until 2014 and this website served as a knowledge repository for Blackboard issues at the college for several years.

This Blackboard Tech Support for Heartland Community College web site design can be seen at: Blackboard Tech Support Website

Outcome of the Work

Prior to the design of this Blackboard Learning Management System tech support knowledge repository website, the college didn't have a way to organize, track, and share information about issues students and faculty were having with the learning management systems for online courses. This meant there was no documentation for issues and solutions which could easily be shared between tech support staff and faculty or students about issues they were facing. If tech support staff left the college, that knowledge left with them.

This website made it possible to document solutions I found to faculty and student tech support issues as well as share those solutions (text descriptions and screenshots) with other tech support staff and easily share with faculty or students via email links or walk them through the solution over the telephone.

This allowed the college to onboard new tech support staff members by giving them access to this website and showing them information about common issues and solutions the college was having with learning management system problems.

This project serves as one example of how I took initiative and ownership of a problem, tried to move that problem a bit more upstream and provided a solution.

Additional Outcomes

Another outcome of taking the initiative to create this Blackboard Learning Management System tech support website was that the Website Manager tasked me with creating an online orientation course called "Blackboard 100: Orientation and Support". After I completed creating this orientation course with Blackboard, the course was required by all new students at Heartland Community College prior to taking an online class.

The course oriented students in how to navigate an online course, communicate within an online course, complete coursework, take quizzes and tests online, and various other online activities like viewing their grade book, course calendar, syllabus, and reaching out for tech support. After I designed this online course during the Spring and Summer 2011 semesters at Heartland Community College the course was handed off to a newly appointed Director of Online Learning to manage this student orientation.

The information architecture for this course I designed can be seen at Blackboard 100: Orientation and Support (PDF)

The Blackboard 100: Orientation and Support course was used successfully to orient new online students at the college for several years before moving over to the Canvas Learning Management System. Prior to this orientation course creation students were not oriented to taking an online class. This course allowed online course students to practice navigating and using an online course in a low pressure and low stress environment before taking a credit course online.

A screenshot from this Blackboard 100 Orientation and Support course I created at Heartland Community College is shown below:

Click on the Blackboard 100 Orientation and Support online course screenshot for a larger view.