I'm looking for any documentation and further information on how cross-listed courses work. Unfortunately the documentation located in the online help is rather minimal.
My configuration is:
My questions are:
Unfortunately the help dept at our university didn't really have many answers regarding cross listed courses - not sure how many people are using them here. They seem to be a powerful feature which minimizes a lot of headache on reconfiguring courses during the term.
Thanks in advance.
Jack
When you crosslist a course is CE/Vista 8 etc, here is what happens. A new master section is created. Content goes into the Master section. A new pointer is created which will reroute all students and faculty into the master section, even though in the My Blackboard they will see the section they are registered for.
For example
Sections
A, B, C, D
New master created as MM, content is in MM now. A - D crosslisted into MM
Student 1 registered for A
Student 2 registered for B
When Student 1 logs into Bb, in their My Blackboard they will See it listed as Section A. When they click on Section A, it reroutes them and they now see MM.
When Student 2 logs into Bb, in their My Blackboard they will See it listed as Section B. When they click on Section B, it reroutes them and they now see MM.
Now faculty member is registered in all sections, when he logs into My Blackboard he will see one of the four sections A - D. From what I have been able determine, the section that shows up is the first one in the list that he was in that was crosslisted. When he clicks on the section that shows up, he is rerouted to MM as the designer/instructor or whatever privileges he had in the sections
TA's will get the same reroute as students depending on which one they are registered for and will have the same privileges in the MM sections.
Now to your questions
Will students in one lab be able to see discussions from students in another lab?
By default yes, however you could be set up in groups in the MM section so they only see discussions you want them too.
Will I be able to register TAs into their individual sections or only in some master container?
If the TAs are in the sections to begin with, they will come over automatically, however if not you can enroll them into the Master MM section. Either way they are placed into the Master section and have the privileges in the master section. They will see all students, all students in the grade book etc. They can not be assigned as specific set of students to only view in the gradebook if that is what you need.
Will TAs be able to see their sections distinctly for grading / student help / discussions?
For the Grade book no. See above. For discussions, if you set them up in groups according to sections then yes on discussions. Email no.
Is the Assignment Dropbox shared across all sections or will TAs be able to see their assignment dropboxes by lab section?
Shared across all sections. TAs would see all students in the gradebook, but there is a field in there that shows which section they came from.
I am not sure which version you are using, but if keeping TAs and students tied too each other is important, then keep the sections seperate. If you have Vista you have a learning hierarchy. For example you could place PDF files at a place in Vista and then link them into your course. That way if you change the PDF it will replicate through all your courses. The same does not hold true for dynamic content like discussions, etc.
We use crosslisting a ton here. Lots of sections that are really the same class because our Distance Education is geo-coded.
Hope this helps, ask more if you need too.
Kevin
Thanks for the comprehensive answer! Yeah I was hoping to keep TAs assigned to the students in their labs since there is often a relationship between the instruction in the lab, help in office hours and grading of weekly and major assignments. It sounds like it is a bit cumbersome to do this - looking at the specific field in assignments and isolation by groups in the discussions.
Follow-up question regarding discussions:
Currently edits to every section during the term are very cumbersome, I'd really like to move to a cross-listed system if I can - trying to work out the kinks before I put it into practice. Thanks again.
Ugh, despite the fact that this forum software offers the ability to use bullet points, it seems that the CSS removes the actual bullets when it shows the post.
There is an Ask Dr C Best Practice paper on corsslisting using the Banner SIS. While some of this paper is Banner specific, it does give an overview of how crosslisting works.
See http://connections.blackboard.com/posts/c9a1cc2628
Harold