The Bboogle Pilot Project
The Bboogle software development project is now in a Pilot phase at Northwestern University, involving our Blackboard-based Course Management System and Google Apps for Education. The pilot project began in early October, and will run through the conclusion of the Fall Quarter. Conducted by the Academic & Research Technologies unit within NUIT, the pilot is engaging thirty faculty members in testing the Bboogle (pronounced ba-boogle) software as they set up and administer CMS sites for their classes.
Key functionalities in Bboogle are the ability to make links within CMS sites to content (Docs, Calendar, and Sites) residing on Google and to allow instructors easilyto manage permissions on Google content for an entire class. Google Apps for Education has been adopted by Northwestern as the email and calendaring application suite for all students in the University. A&RT has been developing for some months a "bridge" technology which improves collaboration opportunities using Blackboard and Google Apps. "Google Docs" (which includes spreadsheets, forms, and presentation tools), "Google Calendar," and "Google Sites" are all provided within Google Apps and may be integrated into course sites through Bboogle. Early development testing suggests that offering these Google applications as tools within Blackboard, with relatively seamless integration, would be of benefit to many classes at Northwestern and elsewhere. Initial feedback on this integration has been quite positive. The Bboogle tool itself is integrated into Blackboard so that no installation of software by faculty or students is required.
Responsibilities for faculty participating in the Bboogle pilot entail three elements: 1) responding to a BRIEF online questionnaire, designed to take no more than 10 minutes, at the beginning of the quarter; 2) passing along any comments the faculty member and his or her students might have about their degree of satisfaction with the software, through a telephone call initiated by A&RT staff to the faculty member; and 3) responding to another short questionnaire after the end of the quarter (around exam week), gathering some information about how the Bboogle tool was (or was not) used by the instructor and students. In addition to the two questionnaires and a phone call, faculty participants have agreed to allow A&RT staff to access their Blackboard site(s) to better understand how they might have been using these sites in the past, and how the availability of Bboogle might have led to changes in the way Blackboard itself is used.
A&RT staff within the Faculty Support Services group (the group providing primary support for Blackboard) will be available to answer questions about Bboogle and how it may be used in connection with faculty teaching. Telephone and email questions from either faculty participants or their students may be directed to the FSS group at 847 491-4044 or course-management@northwestern.edu . The group will be offering training sessions for faculty pilot participants, and FSS staff are also available to address students in their classes on how to use the Bboogle software.
The special accounts provided faculty within the pilot are not for the use of Google email functions. Any Google Apps content an instructor may already have in the main "google.com" domain (in contrast to the "u.northwestern.edu" domain which holds Northwestern Google content) will need to have sharing permissions changed on it to be used in the Bboogle environment.
