PowerLink Tools Available Through Blackboard Vista
VISTA offers a wide array of tools to support the delivery of course content, and a number of tools to help the administrative portion of teaching any class.
The University of Houston has purchased links to several other softwares useful to instructors and these softwares interact within Blackboard Vista to make a seamless integration for students. Contact any of the Instructional Designer across campus for help with any of these PowerLinks. To find contact information for Instructional Designers go to: http://eto.uh.edu/FDIS/Instructional_Designers/teams.cfm.
A list of these PowerLinks includes:
Respondus Lockdown Browser - a tool which makes locks down the computer to make testing more secure. This is an especially useful tool for labs where proctoring can assure that other means of searching for answers during a quiz do not occur.
Turnitin / GradeMark - these tools extend functions beyond plagiarism detection, supporting teaching by facilitating consistent evaluation of assignments. No outside User names or passwords are required when using Turnitin inside of Blackboard Vista as the students are authenticated by the logon with Blackboard Vista.
Wimba Classrooms - With the best elements of face-to-face and online instruction, Wimba classroom provides a fully featured live classroom environment, supports audio, video, application sharing and content display. Wimba makes use of voice-over-IP allowing you to have an "anywhere" location and still be able to hear and talk with your students. Setting up your Wimba sessions using the PowerLink alleviates the need for any outside authentication. Add the link inside your course and you and your students are good to go!
Student Response System "Clickers" - eInstruction clickers are a very inviting way to add interactivity to your face-to-face course. Students use a remote control like device to quiz students, create group activities, take attendance, and create interactivity especially important in large classes. The PowerLink for eInstruction allows a connection between the student responses and your Grade Book inside of Blackboard Vista.
For support please contact the Office of Faculty Development and Instructional Support at (832) 842-2147 option 2 or email blackboard@uh.edu.