Rio @ EDUCAUSE--Blackboard Backpack (Beta)

Blackboard Backpack (Beta)

An Off-line eLearning Solution—a client side application is downloaded to a laptop—so that a student or faculty can work offline with all the content of a Blackboard course.

The coursework can be completed offline and then synched back up to Blackboard when the student or instructor has access to the internet. Discussion boards can be responded to offline—and they synced up again.

A homepage gives all courses, information, announcements, etc. as a starting point. Slides can be annotated—and converted from PowerPoint to a PDF document and then annotated—notes can be taken.

It has a search engine to search all the content of the course—or anything that has been annotated.

When synched, new information is uploaded and a notice is posted that something is new. The student can also sync with more than one institution—for example—if a student were taking a class at ASU and PVCC (both Blackboard shops), the student could download both courses to the Backpack environment. Backpack will recognize the credentials from both schools and download the appropriate courses.

Features

• It becomes a learning repository for the student.
• It allows offline, complete course environments.
• It allows searchable content that can be annotated.
• It has an integrated Blackboard calendar that pushes information to the user.
• Students can create their own electronic notebook.
  

The next release will be SCORM compliant AND will be able to be downloaded to a Flash (USB) drive. At this point, the computer would still need have the Backpack client on it—but in the future—it may be a web-based solution so that a student could use it at a library or other public computing commons.

Rio Application/Brainstorming

Always know what students are expecting—in terms of mobility, convenience, and cost.