Exploring an Empowerment Strategy for Blackboard in a Higher Education Institution

Lecturers in various institutions have taken advantage of technology and integrated it into their courses. Even though most of the lecturers who took part in this study followed this trend, there are still those lecturers who are resistant to technology. Higher education institutions should improve and enhance traditional course by taking the advantage of the Internet and technology to empower lecturers to use and integrate technology. In order to ensure the effective use of technology in course delivery, several higher education institutions offer technology-enhanced teaching strategies to empower academics. Among the technological tools that are used in education for the delivery of courses, using online learning is commonly widespread. The purpose of the current study was to investigate whether the empowerment strategy for cascading Blackboard assisted the lecturers in designing and developing course content in Blackboard effectively. The question posed in this research was: How can the empowerment strategy for cascading Blackboard be integrated to optimally permit lecturers to incorporate technology into innovative teaching? In order to answer this question quantitative data was collected by means of an electronic survey questionnaire after the Blackboard workshops, document analysis such as attendance registers, workshop materials and a Blackboard tool usage report. Participants comprised 38 lecturers at a study university of technology in South Africa. Quantitative data was analysed using SPSS. This article reports on the empowerment strategy for cascading Blackboard. In doing this, we will discuss the development of an empowerment strategy to equip lecturers to design and develop course content in Blackboard. During the research, we established the number of active courses and the tool usage. Challenges that were encountered during the implementation of the strategy will be explained. Finally, lessons learned from the instructional designers' perspective will be presented.