Impact Trial
What is Impact?
Impact is a support tool integrated into Learn.UQ (Blackboard) that offers context sensitive help and on-demand resources for staff and students. The vendor for Impact is Instructure (formerly Eesysoft).
Background
As part of the UQ Digital Learning Capability Roadmap program Impact was trialled between October 2018 and January 2019. The trial included 3 modules:
- Adoption package - generates Blackboard data and usage reports that provide metrics on overall user activity and tools usage within courses which are helpful to understand the current uptake trend and how it developed over time.
- Communication package - sends in-application messages to students and staff with a goal of reducing common issues and drive actions by promoting the functionality and best practices associated to the tool.
- Support package - optimises the operational support and reduces the number of support requests while enhancing users experience in Blackboard using the support messaging, Knowledge Base and support tab embedded within Blackboard.
The preliminary trial indicated that Impact was successful in helping staff with informed tool adoption through context sensitive messages and guides. The product was able to reduce response times for common support enquiries and make the overall support service more effective and efficient. Subsequent to the pilot a deployment of Impact was not proposed due to a reduction in staffing levels in the elearning team in response to COVID. Since that time Impact has also undergone number of improvements since it was trialled at UQ. An opportunity has now emerged to realise the value of piloting Impact.
What is happening?
Impact is being piloted between 24 January and 14 March 2022 to assess its potential benefits for inclusion of UQ’s virtual learning environment.
How is the project being communicated:
- Articles regarding this project will be featured regularly in the Teaching and eLearning News newsletter to all teaching staff
What will be piloted?
| Use case | Description |
| Urgent outage notification | Increase staff and studet awareness for any outages that may disrupt learning and teaching. Provide links to relevant page and contact details for support. |
| Exams for Students | Reminder messages for students for exam related issues to reduce the most common support requests from students. Provide exam minimum system requirement checklist and link to library guides. |
Blackboard Test Force Completion | Reminder message to staff about the most common exam configuration mistakes that disrupt exams. Provide reason and a link to the eLearning website guide |
| What's new in elearning S1 2022 | Promotional of new eLearning tools to staff. Provide links to relevant page and contact details for support. |
Tools usage insights | Report on usage of the selected eLearning tools in Blackboard courses both overall and per faculty to understand the current uptake of tool:
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How can Staff and Students Provide Feedback?
Staff and students are encouraged to provide feedback using the feedback feature within the messages themselves. Staff can also email feedback to projects@elearning.uq.edu.au