Blackboard (and other closed LMS systems) make university a rip-off

1024 days ago

Here is an anecdote (it happened to me today) outlining just one of the many things that is wrong with closed class websites and LMS in general: I am currently working...

Here is an anecdote (it happened to me today) outlining just one of the many things that is wrong with closed class websites and LMS in general:

I am currently working at a software company as an intern, writing a program. Now of course, as anybody who has taken Software Engineering knows (don’t worry readers who are not in Computer Science, I promise I will not lose you), when you make software you have to provide different types of documentation about it. Things like, why you made it, how it works, how to use it, who is going to use it… all these things and many more have to be written down formally and saved somewhere in order for your software to live a long and happy life.

Now, Software engineering (CPSC 310) is a class that in part teaches you how to write all of this essential documentation. I took this course with Meghan Allen, one of my favorite professors simply for the fact that she teaches like a human being and not an automaton. This is post is no reflection on her, just on the system that she is pushed into using by those above her . Anyway, in the course she would explain why this documentation was needed and how to do it. She would then provide us with careful examples of what it should look like. We were asked to use her examples as reference when creating our own documentation for our class project.

So far so good, pretty normal learning experience. But, we skip ahead to right now. My little program that I am writing for this big software company needs documentation. I remember why, but am very fuzzy on how. What to do? Of course, I can just go back to the example from class an… but wait. The examples were posted in Blackboard. I can’t see them anymore. They were a great resource… utterly useless as I have no way of applying it to a real life situation.

Ok, Well, not utterly useless. I still have the assignment that I handed in (thanks Google Docs for keeping it safe for me). I could still google the type of documentation and find other examples online, which works, although it takes time (less time of course than writing this post). The thing is, I know that the document is a fantastic resource, why should I have to go and search for others? Shouldn’t the university-provided example be better than most things I can find online anyway? Isn’t that the point of somone spending time writing it up in the first place? Money was used to create that example (mine and the government’s) so why should it be a one-time deal used only to help me complete an assignment? Can anybody come up with a sane reason why it should not be available to me always? I feel ripped off, because I had a resource and it was snatched away from me. If it had been given to me in good old-fashioned paper handouts, I would still have it.

This is just one example amongst a sea of them that I am sure most students experience often. I guess most don’t even realize that they are getting a raw deal for the time effort and money they put into the classroom. In three years of university I have taken well over 10 courses with Blackboard components. What do I have to show for it? See for yourself. Below is my list of blackboard courses. Makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside doesn’t it?

My blackboard welcome screen

My blackboard welcome screen

Related articles on other sites:

Kiva: The cheapest way to help poor people

1032 days ago

Image by malan.andre via Flickr The short explanation (for those who have difficulty reading more than a paragraph): What is it? Basically, you lend someone in a poor country $25 so...

Ghana Life
Image by malan.andre via Flickr

The short explanation (for those who have difficulty reading more than a paragraph):

What is it?

  1. Basically, you lend someone in a poor country $25 so that they can use it as capital to grow their business.
  2. In a few months you get all of your money back and the borrower has grown their business and are now better able to provide for their family and help revitalize their country’s economy.

It’s that simple.

Why do it?

  1. It costs you nothing.
  2. You change someone’s life for the better and contribute to the economy of some of the world’s poorest countries.
  3. It is a lot of fun! Reading all the descriptions, finding your borrower and tracking your repayments is really enjoyable.
  4. For every person who reads this and lends through Kiva (let me know by comments on Facebook, Twitter or preferably this blog) I will contribute $25 dollars myself (so you get to make me eat my words). If you are in UBC, join the UBC group first.

So come on, go to Kiva and just try it, I promise you that you will not be disappointed.


Kiva - loans that change lives
Now the long explanation (for those of you who want some in-depth explanation).

When it comes to aid of any kind, I am a very big skeptic. Too often have I witnessed well meaning money being squandered on useless development projects. My favorite dumb project is one that I learned about one night in Ghana when I was at a bar with some friends. We met some volunteers and after a while they started to describe their project. Basically, they had been sent from Britain to teach computer literacy to people in Ghana. However, they had been assigned to a village that had no electricity, so they had to charge the laptops with car batteries (this was before the days of one laptop per child which can be charged by batteries). The project was laughably unsustainable.

Not only are there dumb projects out there, but there are so many competing theories about development aid. Some say we should donate no-strings attached money, some say we should just leave the poor to develop on their own because it provides the right incentive. There is also the consideration (the one that stops me from giving most) of “where will my money be most effective?” I would like to maximize the impact of my (very limited) funds and doing so is very hard. I am currently reading different development economic works (currently on the End of Poverty by Jeffery Sachs) and will keep on reading until I have a thorough understanding of what I can actually do to maximize my ability to relieve my home continent of the poverty and despair that it faces.

Kiva sidesteps all of these considerations. Who cares if it is not the most efficient way to end poverty?  It costs me nothing. The money is not aid, it is simply a capital loan. I have the capacity to give unlimited funds and if I decide one day that micro-lending does more harm than good (unlikely) then I simply have to wait a few months and I will not have wasted any money as I will have it all back again. From all the famous developmental economists that I have read or listened to: Dambisa Moyo, Paul Collier, Jeffery Sachs and Stephen Lewis (many of whom as a group contradict each other on most points) none of them say that micro-finance is a bad idea. some argue as to how effective it can be, but none say that it has negative impacts. Until I figure things out I am going to continue to lend on Kiva… it is simply the safest way to go if you want to make a difference.

Finally, for anyone who made their Twitter profile pictures green in support of the Iranians (and do not currently contribute in any other way to those less privileged than themselves), this is one big step up into doing something that can make an actual measurable difference (still at no cost to yourself). Seeing as the action of making your profile green has shown a will to help others, not doing as little as lending money to someone who really needs it shows that you lack any real moral capacity to put that will into action and validates every single sarcastic remark that I and some others have made about the “People’s Twitter Front”.

As for who to loan to, I prefer to loan to Women in Africa, more specifically Women in Ghana. I also like loaning to groups as there is more security. But the nice thing about Kiva is that you have choice. Find someone who’s region/plight/plans strikes a chord in you and help them out. It becomes very personal.

So go ahead, make me, yourself and most importantly a desperately struggling businessperson happy by signing up to Kiva and giving just one loan. As I said above, let me know and I will loan $25 in response.

beach and street 130beach and street 129

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Social Media Classroom – Training wheels that don’t come off.

1043 days ago

The Social Media Classroom is a web service created by Howard Rheingold that provides a space for students to engage in many of the most popular social networking activities out there....

The Social Media Classroom is a web service created by Howard Rheingold that provides a space for students to engage in many of the most popular social networking activities out there. It includes blogs, wikis, forums, social bookmarks, user profiles and chat. The goal is to provide a very low threshold environment for students and faculty to learn about and to use social media as a way of augmenting the classroom.social media classroom

Scott Leslie set up an installation of Social Media Classroom the other day and offered for others to take it for a spin. I gave it a try and here is what I think.

The Social Media Classroom does exactly what it says that it will do. The user interface is quite impressive, making thing really easy to jump into.  Sarah Perez on ReadWriteWeb said that “its ease-of-use and educational slant make its introduction an impressive and potentially game-changing move for the educational system as we know it”. I think she would be right, if it were not for some big obstacles that the platform faces. These are:

  1. It seems to be closed off and private by default (although this may have just been the system I used). If outsiders can participate (as has been shown by Jon Beasley-Murray, Jim Groom and D’Arcy Norman) magic can happen. We need to let the world see what students are doing in university.
  2. The “Social Media Classroom” is missing one little word in the title. A game changer would rather be a “Social Network Media Classroom”. Although students can edit their own profiles in the Social Media Classroom, there is no way to form groups or to add people to their network. The network is often the most powerful part of any social media applications and it is a terrible oversight to not include it.
  3. The training wheels don’t come off. This application is great for students who do not know of, or use social media tools. However, it sucks for those that do. They are not able to use their current networks or applications. Most people who have blogs would want to use their own blogs for a class. Or use their own social bookmarking service. These people (the ones who would be very useful in this environment as they could guide their peers and instructors in the use of social media) will feel alienated and resent having to use the Social Media Classroom. If an education-based social media application is ever to be successful it has to provide an easy way for experienced students to show others the tricks of the trade and for novice students to take the wheels off of the bicycle and use real tools when they are ready for it.

The bright side is that these are relatively easy things for the social media classroom to fix. Jim Groom is already taking care of the training wheel problem at UMW blogs with his BuddyPress, FeedWordPress, WordPress and mediaWiki experiments.  UBC’s OLT also has some of this in the works. I’m sure that Drupal is powerful enough to do the same for the Social Media Classroom. The network part simply takes adding some features and making it open… well that should be just flicking a switch.

The Social Media Classroom is a good service and I really wish that more people had taken Scott Leslie up on his offer of trying it out on his hosted server. If you are in education, check out Social Media Classroom. Despite all of my complaints above, I would still far rather use it than any course website that I have ever used (Blackboard or otherwise).  With a few simple, yet fundamental changes, it could just be a game changer yet.

Related from around the web:

http://www.elearnspace.org/blog/2008/08/20/social-media-classroom/

http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?post=45674

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_social_media_classroom_a_new_platform_for_education.php

Theme Update

1045 days ago

FINALLY. Wow, that took me way to long to get done. So, as I promised in this post here, after many late nights, I have implemented some major changes to the...

FINALLY. Wow, that took me way to long to get done. So, as I promised in this post here, after many late nights, I have implemented some major changes to the theme of this blog. So for all those behind the feed readers… leave the reader for a bit and click around. Let me know what you think. I spent a lot of time on various elements (including some that I ripped out due to lack of patience) so any feedback would be awesome. Below is a picture of the old home page for comparison (click to see fullscreen):

Screenshot of old theme

Screenshot of old theme

Some features to note are:

  • Snazzy JavaScript slider. Why? Lets me show pictures without taking up too much space. One of my goals for this year is to learn to actually draw well in Illustrator and as is obvious, I have a long way to go and need a place/reason to practice.
  • Proper archives page using the awesome wp_archives plugin. I can’t think of a better way to browse archives (aside from tags maybe). The default WordPress way of dates is stupid… they just have no context. One way in which I might change this page in future is modify the plugin so that I can annotate dates around important events in my life.
  • Social Networks page. This has snippets from other places around the web that I haunt. I’m considering changing it in the future to be a bit of a life-stream, but am holding out for someone to come up with an exceptional plugin to make that happen.
  • Better fonts.
  • More pictures!

Again, let me know what you think in the comments below, any feedback is always welcome.

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