Lots of universities have gone somewhat “online” in recent years, bringing some portion of their classes that was formerly only available in person, to the online world. At the institution where I have just started teaching, the faculty are encouraged to get students to start using “Blackboard,” which is an online instructional system. Using Blackboard you can store, retreive, and have it weight and calculate grades (an “online gradebook”); set up and run homeworks, quizzes, and tests; and distribute classroom materials.
In some ways this is a real boon, at least to the teachers and students savvy enough to use it. For example, any student who wants to know their current grade can be instructed to go to Blackboard and look it up… I no longer have to sit there with a hand calculator figuring out how many points have so far been earned out of how many are available. Students who miss handouts can be directed to download them from blackboard. And online tests can be administered so that grading is automatic and, if you want, feedback (right or wrong) is immediate. This can, at least in principle, help students to learn.
However, like all technology there are some down sides. One is that Blackboard assignments or quizzes have a tendancy to “lock up” on the students, so that they do (or think they do) the assignment, but when they submit it, they get locked out. Some of this is no doubt due to student error (such as taking 30 minutes to do a 15 minute quiz, which will definitely lock them), but in other cases it seems that Blackboard or the browser is at fault. Another down side is that not all students are internet or browser savvy, and many of these students are much less likely to even try to use Blackboard — so that all the stuff we put on there is not really available to them. They also end up either getting locked or getting a 0 on the online assignments or quizzes, because they either can’t, or won’t, figure out how to use Blackboard correctly.
I think one of the issues is that students are given a quick Blackboard tutorial when they arrive on campus, but then for many of them the teachers do not use it consistently, and some of them may go a year or more before being asked to now dredge up that one day of tutorial information from months past. It would probably help if all the Freshman courses were asked (very firmly) to use Blackboard to do at least some things, so that students could learn how to navigate the menus and find the important information, at the very least.
Another major issue we had here this semester was that during the last week of classes, Blackboard went down repeatedly. Clearly more and more instructors are using it, and this is leading to loads on it that the server just cannot handle. Supposedly we are getting a server upgrade over the winter break, so this problem may go away to some degree — and this may even help the “lock” situation.
Ultimately though, no computer program is going to make the instructor organized and on the ball, or the student a better student. The instructor in fact has to be more organized with Blackboard — so that he can set up menus, set up pre-tests or whatever he wants before hand, and so that the course is 100% accessible and ready to go before the first day of classes. This ends up being a lot more prep than banging out a text file and sending it to the photocopier. Also, the students who don’t come to class also tend to be the ones who don’t log into Blackboard, so it is not really helping them either — Apathy is apathy, and you can’t reduce it just by turning on some software. For example, in my class the A students, on average, logged into Blackboard over 600 times this semester, the F students less than 150 times, and everyone else around 300 times. So, the computer program might help you but you have to actually use it. And this is true for both the faculty and the students.
Next semester, during the first day of class I am going to do a little Blackboard mini-tutorial just for my section of Blackboard — to show them what links they need, how to get to their quizzes and the course documents, etc. I am sure the really apathetic students probably won’t be helped by this, but hopefully the majority of them will be.
my university has started using blackboard too, although it is not so reliant on it as your instittution seems to be. In my university it is used to put lcture notes up only, which obviously benefits the students
Does it benefit all students though? I’m not sure it does. We have a terrible problem with attendance at my university — there are students who only show up for the exams, and fail them horribly (on a multiple choice test, getting about the same thing as random guessing). These students seem to think that, because the powerpoint slides from lecture are online, they don’t need to go and listen or take notes.
I think it’s one thing to make some stuff easier for the students, but another to make it so easy that they can turn their brains off. And that’s one reason why I don’t (and won’t) put my lecture notes or slides online. I want the students coming to lecture and taking notes. It’s important to learn how to do that… and if you can’t, then you’re not an educated college graduate at the end.
C
It has the potential to benefit all students, which is really all you can ask for. You can’t force a student to use all of the available resources if they don’t want to.
The problem with all of this online stuff at Winthrop is that there is little consistency. Some classes use Web CT (which is very Firefox unfriendly in older versions like we have and the school won’t upgrade for whatever reason), and some use PageOut. The education department uses something else entirely which I can’t remember the name of right now because I don’t have to deal with them.
Thankfully, I’ve never had a professor rely on this stuff. They’ve put the powerpoints and other notes online, but it was still a whole lote more beneficial to just go to class.
They also didn’t tell us they were doing that for a while. But I think that trick will only work for so long before people start spreading the news.
My class this semester will use Blackboard for quizzes, turning in (and checking for plagiarism) papers, and also for posting course information.
Because this time I am mixing some PPT slides with lots of board work during lecture, I will probably put the PPT stuff online so the students can DL that.
I just don’t want 100% of the “board work” to be downloadable as my experience is that then people don’t go to class.
C