As the rain splashed down on Welcome Week’s inflatable Dome, the TEL CQSD team were excited to participate in our first Module Fair. Plenished with a plethora of Blackboard freebies, our mission (which we chose to accept) was to distribute as many of our advisory postcards and talk to as many new students about accessing Blackboard as we could. As the doors were opened (or, more precisely, unzipped!), fresh-faced students flooded in to an expectant arena to select their modules and chat with staff from a range of the university’s support services.
We all thoroughly enjoyed meeting and advising our attentive students about how to log in, when they’d see their modules and where to find help. It was a perfect opportunity to also alert them to the new Blackboard Student app (coming soon!) which will give them anywhere and any time access to their course materials via their mobile devices. We were encouraged to find that many of the students were already aware of Blackboard and keen to find out how to access it.
Needless to say, given the weather, our free Blackboard brollies were a great hit and were quick to go! We’d like to think students were attracted to our stand by our wit and charm, but who are we trying to kid? It was our lottery for eight free £10 iTunes vouchers (kindly donated by Blackboard) that proved the main attraction! Nicky McGirr (Open Online Course Manager, CQSD) kindly drew out the lucky winners: Catriona, Holly, Adam, Ellie, Nabilah, Eliott, Maria and Claudia will be collecting their prizes shortly!
A fun, informative afternoon was had by all!
We’d like to take this opportunity to wish all our staff and students, new and returning, every success in the new term!
For further information about Blackboard for students, please see: http://www.reading.ac.uk/cqsd/TechnologyEnhancedLearning/cqsd-blackboardforstudents.aspx
