Our April profile spotlights the work of Nancy Francisco Stewart. As a first time instructor of Introduction to Social Work, one of Nancy Francisco Stewart's course goals was for students to develop vital collaboration skills necessary to succeed in the field of Social Work. She implemented Blackboard as a means of achieving these goals. As part of the course, students were required to volunteer in local community organizations for forty-five hours and then expected to present their experiences to the class.
Students choose from several organizations and formed groups based on their volunteer placement.
Nancy then created group pages within Blackboard enabling each group to have their own chat rooms, discussion boards, and file exchanges. At first, this was done to enhance group collaboration. To her surprise, not only did the group pages increase student interaction, they also allowed her to see the organizational thought and collaborative learning processes of the students. Another collaborative tool Nancy Stewart utilized was the Discussion Board. In the discussion board students were required to post at least ten messages throughout the semester.