Blue Americas 2014 – A Family Gathering Worth Attending

The Blue Americas 2014 Conference, hosted by the University of Louisville, was held July 31 – August 1.  The first North American conference by the Bluenotes Group was a huge success.  70 members of the Blue family from across North America came together to share their experiences and learn about the future of Blue. And, of course there was plenty of fun!  The theme of this year’s conference, Shaping the Future: Cultivating a Culture of Continuous Improvement, provided the backdrop for rich discussions among Blue users.

Panel discussions:
Highlights from the Blue Americas 2014 conference included engaging panel discussions, featuring Blue users from public and private, small and large institutions, discussing the following:

1. How Blue is used on their campus:
   • How many FTE are dedicated to the use of Blue?
   • Do faculty members add their own questions to evaluations?
   • How many projects does your campus have?
   • Are evaluations centrally controlled?
2. Best practices of using Blue:
   • The pros and cons of using incentives.
   • Are evaluations available during final exams?
   • Is grade blocking used?
   • What strategies have been used to increase response rates?
3. A special panel discussion, featuring members of the Explorance team, was dedicated to the topic of how users get help using Blue:
   • What is the difference between Explorance Support and Professional Services?
   • When should I contact Support?
   • What information is helpful to provide Support to assist with troubleshooting?

During this panel discussion, users were introduced to the new online help center at: https://onlinehelp.explorance.com. This new online help center has a user’s manual, frequently asked questions, a community forum, and a mechanism to submit feature requests.

Individual Sessions:
Panel discussions were followed by individual presentations by participating institutions, Explorance, Provalis, and Nuventive.  Individual sessions covered informative topics such as:

• The roadmap and vision for Blue – did you know that several enhancements to Blue are already planned through 2016?
• How survey responses and course evaluation data can now be integrated into assessment plans using Nuventive’s Tracdat software.
• The new features available in Blue 5.5 including the ability to set thresholds on response rates for reporting and enhancements that made being a Blue administrator easier than ever.
• The ability to learn more about what students are saying through the text analytics module, available in Blue 5.5, built-in collaboration with Provalis. The pre-built dictionaries were developed using over 1 million comments from higher education institutions.
• The opportunity to be one of the first institutions to use Bluepulse, a groundbreaking tool that allows instant and daily feedback to instructors through the learning management system. Instructors now have the ability to ask questions, independent of the end-of-term evaluation, to gather immediate student feedback on any topic.

And, of course, no family gathering would be worth attending without the ability to socialize!  Attendees of the Blue Americas 2014 conference enjoyed a relaxing evening of music, dinner, and sightseeing on the Belle of Louisville.  The dinner/cruise provided a great opportunity to network with other members of the Blue family.

The University of Louisville has the honor of hosting the Blue Americas 2015 conference.  We hope that our Blue family continues to grow for a great family reunion!  Stay connected with the Bluenotes Group on Twitter, and Facebook.