Unfortunately, most recordings from 2020 were lost when the Blackboard Collaborate service was retired. You may view session descriptions and a partial recording below.

• Structuring Your Online Content
• If the Suit Fits...Transitioning KB Duties to the Service Desk
• Creative Applications of the Topic SuperDoc Feature
• Improving KB Search with AI
• KB Usage During COVID-19
• Strategies for Building Your Topics Tree
• Turning Boring Data Into Exciting Visualizations with GIS
• Gaining Insights with Google Analytics Dashboards

Structuring Your Online Content

Knowing what you need to document only half the battle; figuring out how to write it with your users in mind is crucial. In this session, we'll explore techniques to help your viewers easily understand and use your online content.  

If the Suit Fits...Transitioning KB Duties to the Service Desk

We'll hear about the process and lessons learned as the University of Illinois Technology Services transitioned their KB duties to their Service Desk. Learn how to define roles and responsibilities related to KB stewardship, gain insights on how to build KB skills, both hard and soft, and see how KB roles and responsibilities can be distributed across a team.

View session slides as a PDF.

Creative Applications of the Topic SuperDoc Feature

The Topic SuperDoc is a lesser-known feature that can be leveraged in creative ways to enhance your site navigation and maximize the usefulness of your site topics tree. We'll take inspiration from some specific examples currently in place in a few KB sites.

Improving KB Search with AI

The current KB search engine has served our user community well for over a decade and a half. But as the scale of the KB continues to grow each year, we are faced with a set of challenges in terms of content discovery. Weizhong will be exploring and demonstrating ways to leverage AI and deep learning to improve search in the KB. We'll also delve into ways that AI can potentially be used to aid in keyword generation, as well as a look at what AI-generated content looks like!

KB Usage During COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic affected the operations of every campus in the country and sent faculty, staff, and students into a new, 100% remote environment with little warning. We'll take a look at some key stats to show how the KB proved to be a key resource to our campus users, and we'll hear from the University of Maryland Engineering IT group about how they accelerated the growth of their KB during this challenging transition.

Part 1 - General Analytics and Usage Metrics

Strategies for Building Your Topics Tree

We'll discuss some key strategies for building our your site topics tree in a way that your users will understand, as well as methods for evaluating its effectiveness.

Turning Boring Data Into Exciting Visualizations with GIS

Join us as we use GIS to visualize the KB’s search log data activity for the year 2019 and cover the topics of data preparation, software for visualization, and next steps to improve the current map.

Gaining Insights with Google Analytics Dashboards

You are probably already familiar with the stats found in the KB Admin Tools, but there is a wealth of information that can also be found in Google Analytics. While Google Analytics can be overwhelming, we now have the ability to distill key reports and charts for you with dashboards. We'll explore the options available and discuss what data would be the most valuable to you.