Blackboard 9: Teaching and Learning Online Advanced Certification Series

I just completed the three courses in this series. It was an interesting experience taking training from a provider like this. All three courses gave the tools needed to implement more advanced concepts in BB9. What was missing for me more than anything else were examples of implementation from schools using BB9. I guess that is to be expected though. The people enrolled with me were from a variety of backgrounds, everything from Community College to IT types. It would have been difficult to cater to the variety of potential applications.

If I were to give one piece of advice for someone thinking about taking this series, it would be to have a specific goal in mind for each of the courses. Again, hard to do since one does not know what specifically will be covered, but it doesn't hurt to know what you want to apply your new training to. I was fortunate in having been in the process of adapting courses from WebCT to BB9 alongside the training.

Another thing that stood out for me is that this is not to be confused with an online course. The training is not intended to build community in a constructivist sense as part of the curriculum. Almost all the objectives can be met without interaction with anyone else in the courses. This will work better for some than others.

All in all worth the $1200.