BbEurope06 Bblog

With Greg Ritter (gritter@blackboard.com)

The session on Project Caliper was interesting, mainly because Bb always talks about it, but I had no idea what it really was. Since it is still in development, the list of features is not particularly fixed. They talk about it as an assessment manager, but it seems very flexible and more of a process-management and data analysis tool. It is designed so each institution can customize almost all of the pages and flow, which is good. They are calling it the Blackboard Outcomes System. It allows objectives and outcomes to go from an institutional level to a class level. It could be helpful with analyzing the effectiveness of assessment strategies, with revalidation of modules, and with university accreditation procedures. It looks like it will also bring with it institutional surveys and evaluations (in the portal for instance), as well as more student tracking features. The later releases will have more institutional research tools, however those won't be useful for the first few years anyway, as data needs time to compile. We'll have to look at it more closely when finished.