LMS that is not for me: Blackboard

My user role: student

My main problems with blackboard: discussion board suxorz because it encourages overly-long posts; no live chat/synchronous collaboration platform; content is not matched to discussions... tagging? chat space?

I recently took an online course through the school of continuing studies at U of T, hosted on the blackboard application platform. Let me be very clear here: I am not commenting on the course or the course content. So when I say that "blackboard sucks balls", I am criticizing neither the course, nor my classmates, nor the professor.

My main problems were encountered in the user forum feature, and with the course materials posts.  This was an online course, so the only way for students to interact was through virtual sources. Blackboard's main virtual interaction feature was the forum.  This is a pretty classic style of discussion-by-post.  However, with Blackboard, you can not review the discussion thread when you try to enter your own reply. Allow me to clarify. If 8 students have each posted twice, and you want to reply to the most recent post, you are only able to review the most recent one when composing your own comment. This made conversation particularly difficult, and it seemed to encourage users to make "megaposts": 700 - 1000 word single-post rants that were never followed-up.

This brings me to the course material tools.  Professors can post material, but students can only comment on the same material in the forum. That is, you can only comment on your readings by navigating away from said readings and creating a new forum thread.  This proved quite tedious.  A better design would have allowed students to post comments or thoughts right away, through tagging, or the ability to manipulate course materials. If giving students the ability to manipulate course material is too much (too social constructivist), then at least the ability to respond to material by sending a "like" or "dislike" message would have been useful.

Additionally, the tools for synchronous interaction were completely lacking.  In an age of Skype or (now defunct) Google Wave, one would think that synchronous communication tools would be normal features of a virtual learning environment. It's not like there are not any tools for integrating features that are lacking...

Based on my experience in the course, I'd have to say that I was quite disappointed by the features offered by Blackboard.  Especially with regard to my own concerns, deploying enterprise learning materials, I believe that I have to shop around for something better.

A Vision of Students Today? New Assumptions About Knowledge Are the Key.

After reviewing this video, which offers a "Vision of Students Today", I took some time to reflect on my own student experience and assumptions.  After some thought, quite frankly, I find that I am insulted by the vision offered by the video.

A bit of context. The video has a room full of students presenting facts and figures about their daily lives, set to a trance beat. (Actually, I am not sure about that last part, since I disabled my laptop speakers earlier today - that's another story. I base this assumption on the credits at the end of the video).  The facts are related to topics like: Facebooking; cellphone usage; student experience (class life, teacher relations, lecture experience); internet usage; music; and, downloading. There are two things that bother me: there is no suggestion that any topics or data were omitted from the final cut, and there is little in the way of narrative.

I'll cover the latter first.  Multitasking, using the internet, using cell phones and Facebook... how do they all connect? This video offers little in the way of a continuous narrative.  There is an interesting section where the "number of hours" of activity by each student is added up to create a 26.5 hour day.  The next "Fact cards" say that students today are multitaskers. Of course, some of the activities mentioned involve multitasking. For instance, listenting to music was linked to "2.5 hours per day"... but for decades people have used radios to listen to music and programming while they commute, read, perform chores, or work out. Does that count as multi-tasking? Puh-leeze. It's an insult to real multitaskers.

I'm a member of this generation, and I failed to see my own experience. Where is the time spent socializing? Where is the amount of alcohol consumed? (We are talking about university students). What about the "negative" multitasking? For instance, Facebooking during lecture times.  Many of the other facts seem to apply equally to previous generations of students: for instance, anxiety over anonymyty (in the classroom and with profs) and admission of not using class resources (like textbook). This is my first critique: what kind of facts and figures were left out of the video? Since there is not an over-arching narrative or goal of the video, we don't know what kind of goal the makers have of the audience.

At this point, I'd like to try to explain the message and assumptions that I would have tried to make more explicit in my own version (if it were to exist) of the video. I have given this issue some thought, and it is my opinion that what makes students today (my generation) different from the boomers or xers is that we make different assumptions about the nature of information and knowledge.

Allow me to explain by starting with a broad and open-ended question. How do the Internet, video games, and cell phones change assumptions about the nature of information and communication? With the internet, any information can be accessed quickly and efficiently. If you want to know the name of the 1st Duke of Marlborough, you do not have to read an entire chapter (or book) about 17th century England.  Instead, you can access the information by using efficient search terms.  This has marked a change in emphasis from retaining information to accessing and sorting information. In other words, the better learners are the ones who can use efficient search terms to find relevant items, and then use critical skills to determine their validity and accuracy. So, an "internet" generation does not need to learn as much "content" because they can assume that the information can be accessed anytime that they need it. Rather, with so much information available because of the internet, they need to learn better critical and analytic skills to ensure that they can identify the most relevant material. (On a separate note, this begs a major question about peer review journals in an age of wikipedia).

Moving on, cell phones have changed basic assumptions about connectivity and accessibility.With the advent of the cell phone, it became possible to make connections from anywhere, at any time.  And as cell phones have evolved into Web-browsing capable devices, the possibilities of "mobile connectivity" have gained the same characteristics: through the world wide web, it is possible to access information anytime and anywhere on your mobile device. Whether or not you actually own such a device does not make much of a difference: the pervasive presence of mobile devices at all strata of society ensures that you receive information and see people accessing information all of the time.

For me, this is fundamental shift in the assumptions we make about knowledge, and it is a fundamental shift that is not obvious. When you can access information from anywhere at anytime, you do not need to put emphasis on your own ability to retain detailed facts.  It is better to retain the general facts, as well as a "path" to re-access the information.

I have a feeling that this is something that I will return to again in my writing, so I will leave it here.

New blog, new directions-
Why "Operations Theatre"?

I think that many people will have differing opinions about what the "easiest" topic to speak/write about is when you are in a new situation. Is it yourself? The weather? The Charter?

I'm not going to Wade into that sort of discussion here. However, I will bring it up because I think that the first post on a new blog is somewhat similar. You have to decide what kind of topic you will discuss, with the unconscious fear that you first impression will not be a good one, or a lasting one.

However, in some ways, a first blog post is easier than a random encounter. After all, the blog has a title, and the title may interest readers, and should help to establish the content of the blog.

The title of this blog is operations theatre. Why choose something so vague, might you ask? On my personal blog, I mention that this new one is intended to serve as an outlet for writing about professional topics, or topics that relate to my professional interests.

Well, my area of work concerns "operations". That is, the functional area of an organization responsible for the ongoing activities and processes that "turn inputs into outputs." This means administration of processes, procedure production and maintenance, training, and monitoring of business activities.

However, being relatively new to the "corporate world", I often find myself perplexed or puzzled by many of the peculiarities that I encounter. Most "operations" tasks, especially monitoring ones, seem to have been implemented to meet a previously required need and never reevaluated. That is, an ad hoc task that becomes routine. This is why I find so much of my daily work involves some "theatre". There are characters, plots, and motivations that seem fine to people on the inside (like the plot of a story), but peculiar to the outside - the interested audience. I am looking to write about my own experiences, bridging the internal and external frames of reference. Although much of what I see and do is not "theatrical", I think that the word can describe the experience of someone observing from the outside. Thus, my blog title. Enjoy.