Poudre School District

• Fort Collins, Colorado

• 45 Schools
• About 24,000 students
• 3,325 employees
• Nestled against the foothills of the
Rocky Mountains and alongside the
banks of the Cache La Poudre River.
Blackboard Statistics
• 728 active courses
• 4,561 active users
• Average 103,017
page views per day
• Busiest day saw
126,367 page views
Programs
• Started as a way to host our virtual high
school courses purchased from Class.com.
• Now, used mostly to supplement face-to-
face classes.
• Beginning to use it for some staff
development (Book studies, curriculum
specialists, etc.)
• Some use for curriculum planning &
resources
• Used to create discussion boards for a
variety of user groups. (Media Specialists,
Negotiations, etc.)
• Some groups (Science Olympiad, Math
Counts, etc.)
Challenges
• Automating course and user creation.
• Automating user enrollment.
• Getting faculty trained at up to 45 schools
with one trainer.
• Keeping up with email and phone
questions.
• Finding money to pay for it.
• Getting grades into the district’s grade
book.
• Removing students after the semester is
over.
Administrative Support
• Support of director of media and
technology
• Support of director of curriculum
• Support of high school assistant
superintendent.
• Support of chief information officer.
• Buy in from teachers around the
district.
Getting Buy In
• Success of virtual high school.
• Making course content available 24/7.
• Online testing (automatically graded)
• Losing students to competing online
schools.
• Interest of Teachers
– Ease of Use
– Password Protected
– Awesome Tools that teachers can’t create on
their own personal web sites.
Policies and Procedures
• At this point, very minimal.
• To have courses created, teachers
must have his/her course coded on
our student information system
(SILK).
• Prefer that teachers go through 2 or 3
short workshops.
• Anticipate developing policies and
procedures for appropriate
communication and online test
taking.
Training
• After/before school workshops at many
high schools, junior high schools, and
elementary schools.
• Formal staff development classes. 15 hour
courses.
• Training for groups such as curriculum
specialists and media specialists.
• Pedagogy embedded within the “how to”
training.
• College (CSU) credit available.
Getting the Word Out
• Staff development catalog
• Media Specialists
• Blackboard Power Users
• School workshops set up by
administrators
• Newsletter in leave and earnings
statement
• Word of mouth
Online/Hybrid Courses
• VHS – students who failed face-to-face
course or other reason such as teen
parent.
• Self-paced (with time points). Instructor
serves as a facilitator. Students are not on
their own.
• Success really depends on the teacher.
• All types of courses offered (mostly
courses required to graduate).
• VHS courses purchased from Class.com
• Test, assignments, and grading are built
into Class.com courses.
• Supplemental courses are not reviewed.
Managing the System
• System Administrator – 1 (me)
• A person in IT to install/update Blackboard
• User logins
– Automatically created every night
– Tied to SILK
• Courses
– Automatically created every night
– Tied to SILK
• Problem: Teachers who teach the same
course several times a day. (One course or
Many???)
Lessons Learned
• Figure out a way to automate user &
course creation, and user enrollment.
• Figure out how you will deal with multiple
sections (i.e. one course vs. many)
• Figure out an efficient way to train users.
• Make sure equipment is adequate and that
maintenance is being performed.
• Determine a way to deal with help calls
and email questions.