My school is considering (just in the early stages) of switching our Learning Management System (or Course Management System) to a new one called Canvas. Have any of you used this? Do you have any feedback?
Please check one:
___ Switch now; it's better than anything I've ever used!
___ Stay with your current Black-hole-Board
___ Yes, I'd like to be your boyfriend/girlfriend.
I'm not familiar with Canvas, but... can your IT crew support THAT any better than they support your current LMS/CMS? The $1M question would be: Why do they think they can? (Die, IT, die!)
ReplyDeleteNote: Worst Professor Ever has an amusing discussion going on at her blog about Blackholeboard and, generally, LMSs: http://worstprofessorever.com/2011/03/21/what-cant-blackboard-do-for-you/
I encourage everyone to learn a little HTML and a simple language, like Ruby or Python, in order to write your own class webpages. Do not be dependent on IT decisions outside your control.
ReplyDeleteHas anyone else been losing comments? I just (tried to) post a witty and insightful review of every single LMS out there, and blogger said politely "I'm sorry, I'm unable to comply with your request", and deleted it. Sigh.
ReplyDeleteIt was short, too.
and brilliant, did I mention brilliant?
ReplyDeleteOh, honest_prof, it doesn't even have to get so fancy -- even putzes like me can write their own webpages (crappy ones, natch) using Word make the pages and Fetch to upload them. There are things you can't do that way (message boards, assignment submissions), but I don't want to do them anyway. Good luck with the changeover, CC.
ReplyDeleteWhat Cass said. Back in the pre-CMS days I used to make my own course webpages. And they were useful as far as they went. That is to say I could post material, readings, useful links, and so on and so forth. And I sometimes even set up course listservs in lieu of message boards. But maintaining and updating them was a timesink, so I was glad when CMS software came along and automated some of those functions.
ReplyDeleteSo I used Crapboard for a while. But when Crapboard got rid of the one function I actually liked and couldn't make on my own--the digital dropbox--I stopped having any web content for my courses altogether.
Now I teach it like I did in 1992, and I couldn't be happier.
I think primarily we would use the webpage to post grades and accept assignments. The programming to do that is very simple, many examples exist, cookie cutter type of thinking. This would replace pretty much all the function that things like Blackboard provide.
ReplyDeleteDon't know Canvas. Blackboard is evil, I am a happy camper with Moodle.
ReplyDeleteDo note that posting things in public can get you into trouble (copyright, plagiarism, etc). Using a CMS helps hide the dirty laundry.
Thanks, all!
ReplyDelete@Merely, I've had the same thing happen today! I'm sure your feedback was insightful and funny! And brilliant. And short :o)
honest_prof, do you have any suggestions for how to go about learning such things? I use blogger and other free website services because I don't know how to break down and write the code myself. Would love if there were an easy do-it-yourself type of tutorial.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, I've gotten into the habit of always copying my posts before pressing "post comment" just because blogger so frequently eats my words.
@ Academic Monkey -- Take a look at the W3C tutorials (http://www.w3schools.com/html/default.asp). They're free, have sandboxes where you can play with examples, and cover pretty much all the basics.
ReplyDeleteHas anyone tried to set up a group page on Facebook for class discussions, documents etc?
ReplyDeleteI use Google Calendar for the class schedule and embed it in the Moodle page. I love this because it's very easy for me to change the schedule on Google Calendar, and I don't then have to change it in 4 different other locations. Plus I subscribe to the calendar myself so it shows up in my own calendar. This is the fanciest most technically ept thing I do. I am proud of it.
Dr. Mindbender is right, google on HTML tutorial, then google on Ruby or Python tutorials, plus CGI. You will be surprised how simple it is to jump right in and start coding.
ReplyDeleteAlso, my fave trick is to find a webpage I like (in terms of look and feel), then hit cntrl-U to see the HTML source. Plagiarism is encouraged in the coding world.
We are going through the same thing, and Canvas is one of our options. We have several others and must choose quickly as our version of Blackboard is going out of support status soon.
ReplyDeleteWhen we first started teaching online, all of us had to take classes to learn HTML and create our web pages. Administration let that go for awhile but then decided that gave faculty too much control and caused too many problems for students since they had to learn how to take each professor's class differently (as if that doesn't happen in bricks-and-mortar classes). So they forced all of us into LMS and are now in the process of making all of us old-timers take down our HTML pages off the college site and put them only in the LMS. Before we could maintain them online and just link out to them from the LMS.
Once we choose the new LMS and start implementing it, they will wipe all our academic content pages off the server. Anyone found using course-specific websites created on one's own and housed elsewhere will be disciplined.
If my school offered to replace its current LMS (let's pretend it's called "Blackboard'), I'd offer major favors to be a beta tester. Even if the replacement were a clay tablet wedged sticks and henna ink, it would be an improvement.
ReplyDeleteWhile I wouldn't claim to have known every "feature", for seven years I could make Blackboard do what I wanted support a series of both F2F and hybrid courses at a CC.
After work commitments forced a two-year absence, I returned to one of the bajillion SLACs where I live to teach an all-online accelerated section of Dogwalking this term. And I returned to newest version of Blackboard, which I can only describe as a total POS (and I don't mean "point of sale").
It's slow to respond to anything, it's navigation is kludgy, and nearly everything I want to do with it seems to be accomplished by steps which are at best counterintuitive and at worst impossible.
The very responsive and competent learning technology support staff are as baffled as I am.
I've devoted at least as much attention to unscrewing Blackboard issues this term as I have to conveying the nuances of Dogwalking.
I'm no Luddite, and the twilight of my own time in the classroom placed me on the leading edge when web-base content systems appeared.
The current version of Blackboard couldn't suck more. However, it's the non-negotiable tool of choice for my current gig.
I've written my own, scripted pages too. But why re-invent the wheel?
ReplyDeleteMoodle is free (you have to supply your own tech support and server space, so some institutions -- like mine -- buy it rather than build their own infrastructure), user-friendly, and works pretty darned well. Much better than our current CMS, which shall remain nameless to protect my anonymity and avoid libel blackmail.
Englishdoc = "Anyone found using course-specific websites created on one's own and housed elsewhere will be disciplined." - srsly? What a pack of control-freak a**holes. As long as the students can find your stuff through the LMS (I do understand this - it means that they need only one gateway for all their courses), what the !@#$%!! business is it of the university what they get then? Why don't they just teach your classes too, since obviously they know better than you do how it should be done?
ReplyDeleteAlso, re: "discipline" - what can they do to you?
Maybe I'm lazy or insufficiently creative or something, but with a 4/4 load, I just want my university to provide a LMS that works, and provide reasonable tech support so that I don't have to. I've made my peace with our local version of Blackboard (which does, as far as I can tell, vary quite a bit from institution to institution; the versions seem to range from workable but annoyingly clunky to downright exasperating/impossible), and hope to do the same when it is "upgraded" in the near future. At least when things go kablooey (we, too, have had disappearing content, as well as a complete failure of the file upload feature for a crucial week during one semester), it's a university-wide problem, not one I may have created, and definitely have to fix. I keep local copies of all my content, and do any grading that requires more than putting a number in a box on my own computer as well, then upload files containing my comments. So no, I don't really trust it.
ReplyDeleteBut my colleagues who have the time and the inclination are free to experiment with WordPress and other alternative platforms, and many do. Links from Blackboard are, I believe, encouraged, but I don't think that even that is required. I'm pretty sure there'd be a revolt if the school tried to "standardize" things any more than they do.
On the other hand, I'm quite interested in playing around with ways to present parts of my own research (the ones that don't fit so well in academic journals, but might supplement what I publish there), and am in the process of playing around with some of the tools honest_prof mentions (and will make use of some of the techniques and links posted by both hp and Dr. Mindbender; thanks!)
So I don't think there's a simple breakdown between technophobes/luddites and the tech-savvy here; it's partly a matter of where we find it worthwhile, and interesting, to invest our time energy. I'm not willing to roll things quite as far back as Archie has (I love being able to produce handouts just in time rather than having to submit them for photocopying; I prefer grading Word files rather than hard copies; and I make extensive use of Discussion Boards), but, really, I just want something that does the basics well -- but I don't want to have to create it.
From the comments above, I wish my institution would consider Moodle. So far, I've heard fewer complaints about it than about any other LMS (I should also note that it took me more than a year to figure out what "LMS" meant when it started appearing in emails from our tech folks).
@Merely Academic: At least this time we get a say in the LMS. Last time a group of administrators picked it and mandated the universal usage. We're still stuck with universal usage, but we are involved in all stages of the process. They don't want anything on the institution's website they consider irrelevant to the public, and that includes any specific content for academic courses. So Joe Public can find the English Department and our general syllabi, but not anything specific to any one person's course. They also claim because we hold joint copyright with them for all course materials we create, we don't have the right to move our materials to private websites once we lose access to the college serve.
ReplyDeleteAs for "discipline," we do have a policy in place to deal with faculty and staff who don't comply with administrative orders. For something like this, "punishment" might consist of something as simple as not being able to teach online any longer. But it's also designed to deal with other infractions such as repeatedly canceling classes, not keeping office hours, not taking leave when absent, and a host of other ills. It's discipline in stages which can lead to termination, even for tenured faculty. Have I mentioned that our fearless leader of the CC system is a big believer in centralized power and "employees" as opposed to faculty? It's a damned shame because my college's atmosphere has always been the complete opposite.
I've done some "research" (by which I mean I used google, Wikipedia, & about.com) & have done a trial version of Canvas, & am actually kinda excited about Canvas (I SWEAR I'm not a Canvas mole sent to infiltrate)... It seems to integrate all of the cool things about other CMSs & FaceBook, & videoconferencing & posting & student groups (both teacher set up & student), along with digital potfolios (like googledocs) that makes even my Luddite brain synapses fire. I'm sure, though, that Admin being what they are, we will end up with some cheap ass version of crap-point-oh and I'll have something else to complain about on here.
ReplyDeleteI attended a Canvas demo today, and everyone was excited, including our IT people, most of whom worship at the Black(board) Altar. We still have a few more products to look at, but so far this one seems to be the most promising in terms of actually interacting with our students online with ease and in interesting ways.
ReplyDelete