Over the past year Wentworth has been engaged with Mindbridge Partners to investigate the impact of instructional technologies on learner engagement as part of an initiative with the Colleges of the Fenway. The Bettering Learner Engagement Study (B.L.E.S.) examines instructional technology use at the Institute and student outcomes and engagement in an attempt to better understand how to leverage these tools to improve student outcomes. The primary sources of data are our Banner SIS and Blackboard systems.

During summer 2016, Wentworth provided Mindbridge Partners, anonymized data extracts from Banner and Blackboard to analyze. Over the fall term, Mindbridge Partners conducted focus groups with faculty and students to capture attitudes and perceptions not part of the data extracts. In March 2017 we received results of the preliminary analysis.

The primary focus of the analysis was the use of Blackboard, the Institute’s learning management system (LMS). Mindbridge looked at how faculty used Blackboard and tried to establish patterns of association between Blackboard use and student outcomes. Blackboard usage at Wentworth is not very different from usage at other institutions. Blackboard, Inc. has examined usage of their LMS and identified five archetypes of usage (Bb blog, links to full research paper), supplemental, complementary, social, evaluative, and holistic.

Of the five ways that Blackboard is commonly used across institutions Wentworth faculty use the LMS primarily as a course content repository. While the majority of faculty use Blackboard to post content, there are pockets of more robust use, departments and programs that either through design or culture use Blackboard in ways that are effective in promoting positive student outcomes.

As we progress through reviewing the results generated by the CoF Bettering Learner Engagement Study (B.L.E.S.) we are looking to identify faculty best practices in Blackboard use that improve learner engagement and student outcomes, promote those practices, and measure the adoption of those practices through data analytics.