Meeting 7: Recommendation

Data from the final Tool Evaluation Form (Grade Center) completed by committee members was distributed.  Please take a look at what committee members thought about Grade Book Tools in Moodle and Blackboard 9.1.

The Committee met today to finalize a recommendation for the next LMS at Massasoit Community College.  Members voted 15:1 to recommend Blackboard 9.1 as a manged hosting solution with Blackboard Inc.  The finalized recommendation will be posted here once all signatures have been acquired.

Members of the committee expressed an interest in continuing to meet through the spring semester as the pilot of Blackboard 9.1 gets under way.

Meeting 6: Grade Book

The LMS Review Committee met on Friday, December 3rd to examine the Grade Book feature in Blackboard 9.1 together.  The Grade Center (new terminology) in Blackboard offers m any enhancements to what is currently available in Blackboard CE8.  The Grade Center allows you to easily add and modify grades; create weighted, averaged, min/max columns; view portions of the grade book (e.g. assignments only); set warning systems (color coding for grade criteria - e.g. less than a 50% displays as red); run reports; and much more!  The Grade Center replaces the Assignment Dropbox and Assessment Drop Box so all grading is done through the Grade Center.  While rubrics may be associated with an assignment or assessment and can be viewed from a grade book column, grading forms as we know them (interactive, room for comments) do not exist.  You can learn more about the Blackboard Grade Center by visiting The Blackboard On Demand Learning Center to view brief tutorials.


Committee members' evaluations of tools examined during the last meeting may be found here:

Tool Evaluation: Assignments
Tool Evaluation: Assessments

Our final meeting will be held on December 17th, at which time we will finalize a recommendation for the next LMS at Massasoit Community College.