Rebelling Against Blackboard with Posterous and TinyChat

I and many of my colleagues would love to try an alternative to our campus’s clunky CMS. The automatic cross-population of the official CMS with official enrollments is a big disincentive, though, especially for large intro or gen ed classes. It’s just too time-consuming to enter 100+ (or even 50+) students by hand. Is there any way to automate the process of adding students in something like Posterous, using for example the Excel-formatted classlists we can get from the registrar?

Readers of this great post should also check out Boone George’s “I develop free software because of CUNY and Blackboard” http://bit.ly/pJ8gJx

Great post Trent. It is important to present alternatives and guides while putting in the actual work to use and understand them.

Just curious – have you run into trouble with posting PDFs of course readings publicly (due to copyright issues)?  My understanding is that the ‘walled garden’ of Blackboard (or Moodle, etc.) usually suffices to meet fair use guidelines because a username and password is required to access the articles.

Awesome! Like I said, I love WordPress. My own website is WP based, but sometimes I think it’s too much for students to get the hang of, especially when the course is entirely online. I might try WordPress next year though, so I’d be interested in talking to you about it.

I’d be interested to hear what Trent does, as well. For myself, I just avoid the problem. I make sure that any readings I choose are available through our library’s database subscriptions. Then all I need to do is give students the bibliographic information for the reading, and show them how to use the tools they need to find the reading.

This is a question I’ve thought a lot about. I usually link to articles available through the university’s library databases; however, most of the time, I only use/link to readings that are available openly and freely on the web. I usually use a mix of academic and popular writings to help my students connect to their studies. This way, I avoid those pesky copyright issues. 

Thanks, Trent. I will consider Posterous for next semester. This semester I’ve been using Blogger, which I’m very familiar with (http://poli487.blogspot.com/). Unfortunately, Google’s commenting system ate several comments that my students posted as part of their first reading assignment, so I won’t be relying on that again.

To profs teaching classes in the future who might consider using Blogger as a CMS, beware of this issue–it’s a known bug that Google has yet to solve.

Yes, I’ve had trouble with Blogger’s commenting system too. It can be quite irritating. I’m glad to hear that you’re using something other than a traditional LMS to encourage learning though. 

I like the way your site is set up. Great work!

I have been teaching with Google+ as our alternate course delivery system since August. I can harness all of google’s features to aid the class but by far the most fruitful result of the move has been class interaction. I still use ANGEL for quantitative assessment and gradebook but the rest of the course has been integrated into Google+. You can see my initial post here. http://www.theatreprof.com/2011/10-ways-google-classroom/  and I have updated with observations of my progress throughout the last 8 weeks or so. I have no intention to going back. 

I only use Blackboard to post a link to the class blog and to have a folder for the readings.  I know that there are alternatives to posting PDFs that would still be legal, but this has worked well for me.

Thanks for the thoughts. I considered using G+ as well, but I’m hesitant to make my students join/use another social networking site. That being said, I do make my students use Twitter, but I’m still wary to make my students use G+ because it’s still so new. I’m still exploring possibilities with G+. 

While I applaud looking around at other alternatives – I have many reservations about jumping on the “I hate LMS’s” bandwagon.  Making students access multiple systems to access core learning functions does not sound like progress.  Integration of data and processes makes life easier for students and instructors so cobbling together a bunch of free tools (which may not be supported, or even free for long) looks to be more like a step backwards for many.

I’d like to hear more about the technical failings of LMS systems and how they can be addressed rather than broad assumptions and feelings regarding LMS systems.  

As an example – I just looked at TinyChat and it doesn’t offer recording and has copious ads. We have Wimba which is fully integrated into Blackboard, can record sessions (downloadable as MP3 or MPEG), and doesn’t distract students with ads everywhere. How is moving to TinyChat going to be a benefit to me or my students? I’m sorry but I can’t see how all this “cobbling” and “mashing” is helping me or my students.

Here’s a link to a good tool for comparing learning management systems: http://www.edutools.info/item_list.jsp?pj=4.

At ProfHacker, we never argue that *everyone* needs to adopt the solutions we feature. If you and your students are happy with your current arrangement, by all means stick with it!

However, many people have reservations about the quality and influence of LMS’s (see the links that Trent provides in his second paragraph above, but also “I develop free software because of CUNY and Blackboard” by Boone Borges and “Where are the students?” by Luke Waltzer), and for those people the workaround described above is one solution among many.

Thank you for the post. My University also uses Blackboard, and I despise it. I’ve been using the “TWEN” section of Westlaw (an option only available in law schools) and while it’s easy to use, it’s also very limited. I’ve thought about using WordPress, but I think it’s too complicated — and I’m more tech-savvy than most law school faculty, and much more so than my typical student. I’ll definitely take a look at Posterous, and would welcome future columns that discuss other options.

“I’m sorry but I can’t see how all this “cobbling” and “mashing” is helping me or my students.”

I can’t see it either. I’d be the first to agree that Blackboard and other CMS’s are not perfect products, but they are designed to support and faciliatate online courses. Most of the complaints I see here (particularly the ones in the article) are vague and generalized. CMS’s
 aren’t warm and inviting? If sprinkling your course site with a few cartoons and cool apps is more inviting, well, yeah, you can do that in most CMSs as well (and link to publicly available content that’s not in the CMS). Plus, you get tools that manage student information, including grades, privately. The mix and match approach suffers in that many of the tools aren’t specifically designed to manage a formal learning environment.

Given that the newest version of Blackboard allows instructors to distribute content within the course in a variety of different ways, I’m just a little perplexed at this whole notion that this approach is very different. I get the whole “resist the LMS corporation” vibe and think that those products (like much software) are overpriced and undersupported. However, I don’t see anything particularly groundbreaking about the approach detailed here. If anything, it feels more like the “good old days” of home grown course Web pages, only with social media.

This isn’t to say that it can’t be effective or engaging. However, the case against the LMSs and the suggestion that this method is advantageous from a *learning* perspective, for me is not proven by anything I’ve come across here. It’s more like one imperfect tool being shunted aside for another imperfect collection of tools. Beauty in the eye of the beholder, as it were.

I actually just had a student come in and tell me how much she dislikes the new Blackboard 9. She told me her teacher can’t figure out where to put things, and it makes things difficult for the entire class. Some of the feature Bb has are nice, though, like the private journal and the ability to give assessments. Those features are probably expensive to implement. I’ve been using WordPress this semester and Twitter as a supplement to Bb, where I post announcements with links, allow to use their private journal for freewriting, and add discussion boards for drafts. Maybe Posterous would be a better alternative to try next semester.

> Have you experimented with alternatives to Learning Management Systems? 

I’ve built a modular courseware site using two blogs as databases:  one for topic modules and the second for assignments.  Check it out starting here:

http://cis275topics.blogspot.com/2010/09/about-our-electronic-text.html

I appreciate your thoughts, but I don’t understand your argument. Using available tools together in order to create a better learning space for students is not a step backwards. It’s adapting to a current educational context. I dislike Blackboard for many reasons: it’s cumbersome, slow, generic, cold, and devoid of emotion and design. I use Blackboard as an example of how not to design an online environment. 

Yes, TinyChat has ads. So what? I don’t see your point here. TinyChat is free and anyone in the first-world can use it. The larger issue is that private enterprises have a stranglehold on education, and it shouldn’t be that way. What’s the point in having a learning environment where the teacher has almost no control over it? 

You don’t have to see value in my approach, but my students and I do. I have witnessed more positive responses, discussions, and fun than I ever did using Blackboard. 

I’m concerned about such things too, but students do it every day when they navigate between different classes and coursework. It’s not a foreign concept to have students access multiple digital contexts in order for them to interact with learning. This type of navigation is imperative because it’s a 21st century literacy skill, which will serve them well once they leave the academy. 

Interesting comment. First, this piece isn’t meant to be some deep theoretical treatise on how current LMS designs are destroying education, so I don’t understand your “vague and generalized” comment. Second, this piece is about doing something. It’s not about talking about doing something. There’s enough of that in the academy. Third, why do we need “formal” learning environments? What are those? Formal online learning environments are what make online learning difficult, boring, and not fun. Fourth, as you do not find much use in my piece, I do not find much use in your comment. You haven’t provided me with any constructive criticism, so I don’t know what to take away from your haphazard argument. 

Generally, students and teachers don’t like using Blackboard, so I created a space that my students and I do like using to learn. That’s what matters. 

Thanks for your comment. I’d love to see what you come up with, especially since you’ll be using this type of tool to supplement law pedagogy. I agree with you that WordPress is complicated, especially if you expect a class to learn how to use it fully during one semester. 

Good thoughts. I think that different learning environments fit different learning styles. I would encourage you to explore Posterous, though if you’re getting good results with WordPress, then I say stick with it. I might try WordPress next year, but I wanted something with an easy learning curve. 

I love using Twitter, and I use it in all the classes I teach. It’s makes a fantastic backchannel. 

Thanks, I’ll check those out. 

I’ve never heard of it. I’ll look into that tool. 

My school relies on Blackboard. I use it to upload readings and to send batch e-mails to the whole class, but otherwise I don’t spend much time with it. For the past few years I’ve relied on blogs instead, first with Movable Type and now with WordPress.

All these platforms have drawbacks. Blackboard allows no independent contributions from the students. Even discussion board sections must be opened by the professor. Movable Type was maddeningly difficult to figure out and required much attention from the TA just to make it flow smoothly. The formerly straightforward sign-up protocols for WordPress have been changed recently; they are now complex and unnecessarily awkward. 

But here’s the thing. My students may know nothing about building a blog or putting up a post when they first arrive in my class, but by golly they’ll know how to do those things and more when the term is over. Such facility with a web-based creative endeavor will serve them well as students and as capable citizens of an increasingly digitized world. The TA who struggled with Movable Type came to the other side of the
semester with a host of new skills that she used quite profitably in
many other scholarly and personal contexts.

Just to be clear, blog-building skills are never the purpose of the course. They’re ancillary to the core tasks of reading, analyzing, and writing. But the blog platform lets those fundamentals happen through a community that gives all participants *almost* equal weight (I reserve the status of blog administrator for myself) and that makes it possible for the students to engage each other in ways that Blackboard can’t allow.

It takes nurturing and attention from the prof, but when it works well, the blog component of a class can become a rich and vital part of the semester’s dynamic.

[One very big caveat: I've only used this with seminar-sized classes. Next time I teach a mega-lecture of 150+ students, we won't be building an intimate blog as a required counterpart to class sessions -- but then I'll explore other online tools that will be better suited to that different context.]

> Of course kids are talking dirty through some type of digital media tool! This is not news.

I really did not think it was news, but it feels undignified to send my students to a place where that happens.  I am not one of the boys.

> TinyChat allows as many users as you want to participate

How well does it scale?  Ballpark — can you accomodate 25?  50?

Does it sense who is speaking and focus on them?

Larry

Sorry – there is nothing personal in my comments.  I have the viewpoint of someone who both teaches online and who is an admin on a couple of systems.

There are always faculty who DO get it and pursue options – and you’re one.  I can understand why you’re taking the path that you do. But if many faculty did this on a large campus, it would result in chaos.

Good intentions and the desire to go farther and farther tends to create situations that are unsustainable in a large system. We have one and only one LMS for 27,000 students. I have no idea how other campuses manage more than one LMS, but they must have a lot of staff.

What I personally have done in linking to outside resources is to use the university’s LMS as the front door – then the enrollment systems work and the students all find their class.  When they opened the class shell, there was a big link to the exterior site and directions on how to proceed. I knew that when I did that, I was totally on my own and the university didn’t support anything I did outside the course platform. I also knew that was realistic and I couldn’t expect support for a freelance course project outside the university’s systems. Most faculty wouldn’t dream of doing that, nor do they have the skills – and most of them have been able to achieve what they want to do inside Blackboard.

I’m glad you had a positive experience. I have not, and almost all other teachers I talk to have not, so I did something different. 

Oh – I understand that using other tools can be fun and I’ve often been tempted to spin off and use something else when a vendor releases something better than what we have in the LMS.  However – we do annual surveys and find that about 70% of our students and faculty are very happy with Blackboard (we use 9.1 with Collaborate).   

We find that our students are more interested in the following:

*A single portal for all classes
*Ability to take tests and submit assessment online
*A single place for all grades
*They want the system to be fast and available 24×7
*They want the ability to record lectures and play them back (hence the Collaborate option we added)

Our current LMS provides all this.  

An LMS is what you make if it.  Yes – it can be cold and boring but it doesn’t have to be that way.  There are many ways to change the look and feel of individual courses or the system as a whole.  We’ve decided that there is value in integration, consistency, and single-portal access.

To each his own and let the students decide!  More power to you!

” First, this piece isn’t meant to be some deep theoretical treatise on how current LMS designs are destroying education” But you express that you are “deeply skeptical” of LMSs in your article and assert that Blackboard “rarely encourages learning.” So, why isn’t this a legitimate avenue for discussion (as opposed to the straw man your quote offers up)?

“vague and generalized” How about things like “[Blackboard] rarely encourages learning” or “Generally, students and teachers don’t like using Blackboard.” The first one is an assertion as much as anything else (and the only way to prove it would be to demonstrate that learning doesn’t happen often in Blackboard, something I don’t expect will happen), the second doesn’t hold true in my experience any more than any other application. I know the newest version of Blackboard has quite a few bugs, but just yesterday in a training session, I had faculty participants tell me they liked the new system.

“…why do we need “formal” learning environments?” I think you muisunderstand me, here. Not formal, as in “stuffy, rigid, please only speak when called upon.” Rather, formal as in an environment that addresses as many needs of the college classroom as possible, things like grading, assessments, purposeful (as opposed to impromptu) discussions, organization of student data, and work, etc. This isn’t to say that some or even many of those things can’t be accomplish with the method you present. But it’s clear even from your comments here (particularly the challenges you acknowledge with grading and FERPA) that the method has limits. Certainly learning can happen in an informal environment, but college, no matter how friendly and entertaining, is a formal process, with specific goals (learning objectives, assessments, certification, etc.) In as much, your own course is a formal learning environment as well. The challenge you face is finding tools that will facilitate that environment. The goal of an LMS manufacturer is to make those tools available in a central location. There are flaws in both approaches.

“…as you do not find much use in my piece, I do not find much use in your
comment. You haven’t provided me with any constructive criticism, so I
don’t know what to take away from your haphazard argument.” Leaving aside the silly “tit for tat” part of the comment, I think you’re missing my point. Your article is in part based on the premise that LMSs don’t provide enough flexibility and “warmth” (which, with all due respect, is a judgment call) for the learning experiences you want to create. However, looking at the example you provided, I don’t see much that an LMS couldn’t provide. In the case of Learn 9.1 there are some limits to course design (backgrounds, icons, and layout – although this last one is in part a product of local administrative choices) and I would agree that Blackboard should be more flexible in that area. WebCT was better in that regard.

My argument is not that people shouldn’t choose to work outside the LMS. Although it should be noted that an LMS can incorporate external resources as easily as any other Web site. Rather, my problem is with the assumption that someone’s individual mix and match of various resources is intrinsically better or more effective than what can be done in an LMS. Much of what I found on your site could be accomplished in an LMS and the essentials of what couldn’t (links to specific unique learning resources) could be accomplished with links to those resources.

That doesn’t invalidate your own personal choice. Rather it makes the point that for many, the LMS is an adequate and perhaps preferable environment, in that it provides they and their students with many resources and features (including a certain familiarity with the interface that some students appreciate) that are advantageous. Are Blackboard and other LMSs perfect? Of course not, but those systems are improving.

That you find that line of thinking “haphazard” is bemusing.

I’m using a private WordPress blog with my business students in Integrated Marketing Communications in much the same way you are with Posterous. Since we meet real time twice a week @stkate we’ve no need for video chat, but I like what you’ve done.

You have some good insight here. I can see how chaos would ensue in the situation you described. I think there’s a larger issue here about LMS and faculty inexperience with digital technologies, and I’m not sure how to address that at the moment. 

Good insight. I don’t agree with some of it, but I will certainly keep it in mind when I write my next LMS criticism piece.

Chipa, I really suggest you read this very thoughtful and detailed article from EDUCAUSE:
Death to the Digital Dropbox: Rethinking Student Privacy and Public Performance by Patrick R. Lowenthal and David Thomas. EDUCAUSE Quarterly, Volume 33 (2010), No. 3. http://tinyurl.com/27t92wx
I believe we are doing our students a terrible disservice to lock down their work in the hyperprivacy of the LMS (as the article explains), and, moreover, by locking down our own teaching materials we are making it very hard for online learning to really advance – most of us were not taught in online environments, so we are having to invent new approaches to teaching as we offer materials online, and we need the benefit of seeing what others are doing and learning from that, something that SHOULD be possible online… but which the hyperprivacy of the LMS makes impossible. Blackboard, Desire2Learn – these systems do not let teachers OR students share their work on the open Internet, even if they want to.
I have to say kudos to one of the new LMS – Instructure – for offering instructors the option to make their course pages fully public – not via a guest log-on, but as actual webpages on the open Internet, accessible as learning resources to all. Sure, some faculty members may not want to share, but just speaking for myself, as an instructor at a PUBLIC university, I think it is part of my job to make my learning materials available online and I do… no thanks to the LMS we use at my school (Desire2Learn), which does absolutely nothing to help make that possible.
For information about the public side of my courses:
http://laurakgibbs.blogspot.com/2011/09/range-of-public-and-private-in-my.html

I use Engrade for secure online grades, although a lot of what we may think of as FERPA isn’t really FERPA.

I’ve also been using WordPress for on-site classes and will do so for hybrids, and am almost ready to try it for fully online. But instead of Engrade, which is separate, I’d prefer an integrated gradebook and good nested discussion forum, so I’m going through the plugins like BuddyPress Courseware. But if it gets too LMS-y, I won’t like that either.