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The Use of Blackboard® in Accounting Courses
Joann Segovia, Assistant Professor
Minnesota State University, Moorhead
The Internet has revolutionized the way individuals communicate, conduct business, socialize and find entertainment. In education, course management systems such as Blackboard® or WebCT® provide a support infrastructure to create and maintain course web sites. Instructors can customize courses and manage course materials to enhance online learning that may appeal to specific learning styles of students who are more motivated to access a web site than to read a text or complete traditional homework assignments.
When college courses include the use of course management systems, students gain experience using technology. The AICPA identifies one of the competencies for CPAs as being technologically adept or "able to utilize and leverage technology in ways that add value to clients, customers, and employers" (AICPA, 1999).
In a recent review of web-based instruction software, evaluators assessed Blackboard as the program that is easiest to use for faculty and students and that meets the needs of most instructors (Fredrickson, 1999). Instructors can create professional-looking courses without any formal training and can easily import previously created files. This paper discusses Blackboard's four primary areas of functionality and provides suggestions for its use in accounting courses.
Content Management:
In one aggregated view, the content management screen provides announcements, a calendar, event tasks, and grades for multiple courses. Students access courses and maintain personal information in their individual calendar, address book, or to-do list. Instructors organize the course's content using a folder structure system. Figure 1 presents the basic menu for twelve areas to post course contents that the instructor can disable or customize - the names of the areas can be changed to better describe content for a specific course.
Figure 1: Standard Twelve Areas to Post Course Content
Publisher's materials are easily loaded into a course site through the use of cartridges, comprehensive collections of publisher-created content. These are made available to instructors for import into Blackboard instructor-designed course web sites. Typical content includes slides, course documents, quiz banks, and lists of relevant links. Figure 2 demonstrates a publisher's content management areas for an introductory accounting course.
Figure 2: Publisher's Course Content for Introductory Course
Communication Area
The communication area enables collaborative learning through discussion boards, real-time virtual classroom interaction, and group communication. For each user, the system marks discussion board messages as read or unread and maintains messages for viewing without any modification or replies. The system allows on-line text chats, drawing on a shared whiteboard, and collaboratively browsing and graphically marking web pages through the virtual classroom.
Students can e-mail the instructor, the entire class, or selected students within the class as pre-determined and set by the instructor. Groups of students who collaborate on work can use protected discussion boards, virtual classrooms, and file exchanges for their group. In addition, students can access scholarly journals and periodicals, or various academic web sources that relate to discipline-specific information, news, or events. Students also can submit assignments through the digital drop box, a special area that allows students to transmit files to the instructor.
Assessments
Quizzes and surveys designed in assessments increase student preparedness for in-class exams and measure student progress in the course. The questions' format includes multiple choice, multiple correct, true/false, matching, ordering, fill in the blank and essay. Publisher or instructor-written test banks and question pools allow randomization and reuse of questions. Instructors can use passwords to protect access to assessments, set time limits, provide instant feedback to students, and have the system post grades in the grade book.
Control
Figure 3 demonstrates the control panel and the areas that the instructor may modify. The instructor enrolls or drops students from the course and limits access through log-ins and passwords. Future students with guest access can view selected areas such as the course syllabus. Grading assistants' access can include the ability to post and remove documents, and update grades. Through course statistics, the instructor can track students' usage of Blackboard.
Figure 3: Control Panel
Course management systems easily eliminate outdated materials on professor's web pages. Between academic terms, the instructor updates course files, resets discussion boards and assessments, and can make files unavailable to students until updated. The newest release of Blackboard now allows instructors to queue material for automatic release at a specified time in the course.
The type of format (html, plain text, PDF, PowerPoint, Word, multimedia and video) that the instructor should use is influenced by: (1) the potential uses by the student - will they be reading online, downloading, or printing the material? (2) hardware used by students - do they have Internet access via modem or direct university connection? (3) the frequency content is updated, and (4) required plug-ins or software - does the material require special plug-ins to be downloaded or special software to be installed?
Advantages of Blackboard
Strengths of Blackboard include: an electronic grade book, email capabilities, asynchronous and synchronous discussion features, a whiteboard, online testing and grading, a calendar, multimedia capabilities, and flexibility to re-arrange course content (Fredrickson, 1999). The technology of course management systems effectively augments classroom-based learning by using various supplemental resources and by enabling interaction with other students which stimulates and broadens learning experiences and develops technology skills that accrue to students exposed to the powerful techniques and tools of network-based learning (Haughey and Anderson, 1998). Blackboard provides the ability to accommodate various learning styles through the creation of graphics, use of video and audio clips, pictures, animations and simulations that recognize learners' visual and auditory learning styles (Kussmaul et al., 1996; Haughey and Anderson, 1998). In addition, a variety of formats can improve learning skills in different areas while enhancing student interest in their own learning (Haughey and Anderson, 1998).
The use of the discussion board provides students more time to think about responses and provide more in-depth responses. In addition, students are less likely to be discriminated or marginalized due to shyness, speech or physical features (Haughey and Anderson, 1998).
When the instructor posts documents to the web site, students can access resources at their convenience. Students control the rate of presentation and can move quickly through familiar material or slowly through difficult topics. This benefits students with handicaps, language difficulties or schedules that interfere with their ability to attend or participate in regular classes (Kussmaul et al., 1996).
Effective Strategies for Use of Blackboard in Accounting Courses
Careful design and implementation of materials within a Blackboard course will eliminate potential problems. Jansak (2000) discusses several possible disadvantages that arise from the use of Blackboard. First, frustration and annoyance may arise when computers do not work properly. Second, students may find the use of a discussion board tedious. In addition, when students use the drop box, students are uncertain if the instructor has received the assignment. Finally, students may not attend class because they think the instructor has posted all important information. The next paragraphs discuss ways to eliminate these disadvantages.
Strong technology support will enhance the effectiveness for both the students and the instructors. Students need to know who can assist them with technical concerns as well as provide the necessary support and training to acquire and practice new skills that may be required to use the system (Haughey and Anderson, 1998). Technical support may originate from the instructor's university or publisher who provides materials for course management systems.
Students need to understand how the discussion board works and how messages are marked and posted. Otherwise, the discussion thread can become rather fragmented and not as meaningful to students.
When using the digital drop box in a course, the instructor must check this area for new submissions. To eliminate students' uncertainty in transmitting documents, the instructor can require a specific deadline that includes the date and time and notify students who have not submitted documents. If the course allows independent progression, students can e-mail the instructor when the student submits assignments.
Decisions about the format of the course will affect students' required study time and instructor preparation. Utilization of various learning activities will achieve course objectives and accommodate students' varied learning styles. An effective course design considers:
- Identification of instructional goals
- Identification of student characteristics and prerequisite skills
- Understanding of the context and language of the subject matter domain
- Definition of learning and performance objectives for the course
- Development of assessment instruments to test whether the objectives are met
- Development of learning materials and activities to allow learners to achieve the goals and objectives, and
- Assessment of the learning and cost-effectiveness (Haughey and Anderson, 1998).
Online assessments measure student progress and achievement of objectives. The instructor must carefully consider the use of online assessments to avoid students' collaborating on "individual" quizzes. The use of proctors outside of the regular class, timed quizzes, and randomly generated quizzes from test pools all discourage "group" effort by students.
If quizzes include short answers, exercises, or problems, the student enters the answers as appropriate. Unless the student's response exactly matches one of the options entered by the instructor, the computer will grade the response as incorrect. The use of commas, dollar signs or other formatting differences can result in a "wrong" answer by the computer. If the instructor provides a recommended format, students will enter fewer "wrong" answers due to differences in format and the instructor's time in re-grading exams will decrease.
To avoid formatting and printing problems that arise from different file formats and hardware systems, instructors can use PDF files or HTML coding to create documents. For most instructors, HTML coding requires more time than the use of PDF files.
Conclusion
The use of Blackboard appears to be a valuable tool for accounting courses. As instructors continue to develop courses that include the use of supplemental materials posted in course management systems, various research opportunities exist to determine how to effectively use course management systems as a supplement to teach courses as well as a method to develop web-based courses. Further research can ascertain if the use of Blackboard enhances learning and whether students with learning styles not met in the traditional classroom benefit from Blackboard's features.
REFERENCES:
American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, 1999, The AICPA Core Competency Framework for Entry into the Accounting Profession, http://www.aicpa.org/edu/corecomp.htm
Fredrickson, S., 1999, "Untangling a Tangled Web: An Overview of Web-based Instruction Programs," T H E Journal (Technological Horizons in Education, 26 (11). 67.
Haughey, M. and T. Anderson, 1998, Networked Learning: The Pedagogy of the Internet, McGraw-Hill, Inc., Montreal and Toronto Canada.
Jansak, K., 2000, "Building a supportive online instructional environment for reluctant, apprehensive and/or under-prepared learners," http://www.mtsu.edu/~itconf/proceed00/jansak.htm
Kussmaul, C., J. Dunn, M. Bagley, M. Watnik, 1996, "Using technology in education: When and why, not how," College Teaching, 44 (4), 123-126.
Blackboard and the Blackboard logo are registered trademarks of Blackboard Inc.
Netscape and the Netscape N and Ship's Wheel logos are registered trademarks of Netscape Communications Corporation in the U.S. and other countries.
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