What is Blackboard Outcomes

The University of Toledo could use the Blackboard Outcomes assessment management software for planning and reporting assessment across the university.

Measuring learning is a key element to outcomes assessment, and is the foundation for improvement. Institutions need to understand student attitudes and skills in order to measure outcomes. Collecting this information can be challenging when data is separate and tools or processes are not coordinated.

Blackboard makes course-embedded assessment a reality. Assessment professionals can automatically collect assignments and the related student submissions directly from Blackboard Learn course sections. This makes burdensome assessment activities quicker and easier for faculty and students, and part of their day-to-day teaching and learning activities.

Blackboard's Outcomes Assessment solution uses course-embedded Assessments to automatically collect assignments and related student submissions directly from Blackboard Learn courses. This makes burdensome assessment activities quicker and easier for faculty and students, helping the university comply with regulations while accurately measuring student success.

  • Collect Direct Evidence of Student Learning – Automate the harvesting of student assignments from online \Land hybrid courses.
  • Authentic Assessment – Use rubrics to evaluate randomly sampled student evidence of learning for an authentic assessment practice that provides specific, actionable insight into areas of strength and weakness.

NOTE: Currently the only Evidence that can be collected out of Blackboard Learn courses and into Outcomes Evidence Collection projects are native Blackboard Learn ASSIGNMENTS.

This does not include:

  • Tests
  • Test Questions
  • Safe Assignments
  • Other gradable content in the course (such as discussions, blogs, journals, wikis, etc).
  • Grades

Outcomes Assessment System (screenshot)

Outcomes Assessment System (screenshot)

The Outcomes Assessment System is accessed in Blackboard Learn by clicking on the Outcomes Assessment tab. There you will see the individual Evidence Collection projects listed.

IMPORTANT NOTE: the Outcomes Assessment tab will only be available to departmental representatives that have contacted Alana Malik and have received prior approval to use the system.

Overview of the Outcomes Assessment Process

Overview of the Outcomes Assessment Process

The Outcomes Assessment Process allows for the gathering of student assignment artifacts previously submitted to the course section into a collection, sample the artifacts into a statistically correct size if desired, and distribute the sampled artifacts to evaluators for external rubric evaluation.

In its most simplified form, the Outcomes Assessment Process consists of 5 basic steps:

  1. Create an Assignment and Rubric - The first step in the Outcomes Assessment Process is to create an Assignment in your Blackboard Course site and Align that Assignment with your desired goals or outcomes. You can also create one or more rubrics to be used in evaluating the goals or desired outcomes of the assignment.
  2. Create an Evidence Collection - The next step is to create an Evidence Collection or Project that can be used to collect all the relevant assignment submissions (artifacts) within a particular Blackboard course or set of courses.
  3. Sample a Collection - Once an Evidence Collection has been started, you then need to decide how the student artifacts (assignments) will be sampled--you can choose to use either all the artifacts in the collection or just a specified random sampling.
  4. Evaluate an Evidence Set - The next step is to assign evaluators who will use the rubric that was attached to the assignment to evaluate how well the aligned goals were met.
  5. Analyze the Results - The last step is to run an analysis of the evaluations and to generate a report that summarizes how well each of the aligned goals was met.

 

Detailed View of the Outcome Assessment Process

Detailed View of the Outcome Assessment Process

Above is a more detailed view of the Outcomes Assessment Process with some of the 5 basic steps broken down into substeps.