As many ProfHacker readers know, I’ve just started a new job at a new school. I’ve been adjusting to a new city, a new institution, and, it turns out, to new technology. For email, calendars, and the like, my old school was fully invested in the Google ecology—which I liked, because my personal email and calendars were Google, too. I frequently use Google Docs for collaborating with colleagues and students, and this was easier when I could be confident that those colleagues and students had easy access to the service. For course management, my old school used a customized version of the Sakai course management system (CMS). Folks liked to complain about it, but I got very familiar with what it could and couldn’t do, and overall I liked it.
My new school, however, uses the Zimbra Collaboration Suite for email, calendars, etc., and Moodle for managing courses. When I discovered this, my first instinct was to find out how best to circumvent those technological choices. I looked for ways to feed my Zimbra email and calendars into Gmail and Google Calendar (answer: it doesn’t seem to be possible to set either Zimbra or Google Calendar up so that you can view and edit all of your calendars in one or the other). I actually set up a new WordPress installation on my personal website so that I could manage my classes with ScholarPress—which is itself quite different from Sakai, but was at least a platform with which I was familiar.
Soon, however, I stopped planning subversion long enough to ask myself: “Why the contrarian reaction?” I didn’t know much about either Zimbra or Moodle, and I couldn’t say with confidence that either was less effective than the products I was used to. True, I had a certain investment in the platforms I’d been using, but was that investment enough to justify me immediately distancing myself from my new institution? Then I spent a few days tinkering with both Zimbra and Moodle, and found that both had their virtues. I learned, for example, that Zimbra makes it very easy to propose and create meetings with other Zimbra users, a feature Google has yet to perfect (as evidenced by George’s many posts on the subject). Given that the majority of the meetings I’ll be scheduling from now on will be with local colleagues who use Zimbra, it makes good sense for me to embrace this feature. After a bit of experimentation, I’ve also found that Moodle can do most—if not all—of the things that Sakai did for my classes. And, of course, Moodle hooks into my school’s other systems, such as course rolls, which my personal installation of WordPress could not have done.
I still prefer many things about Google’s ecology over Zimbra’s, and Sakai still feels more polished than Moodle. Nevertheless, I’ve decided to make a go of it with both Zimbra and Moodle. Using these two platforms will help me become a better member of my new academic community. For me, that trumps these particular technological preferences, which are based mostly on personal comfort. I still have personal access to the Google platform, through my personal account, in case I need any of its features. And there are also some programs I won’t switch away from. Zimbra has a built-in task manager which I don’t plan to use. ProfHacker readers know my devotion to Things, and since Zimbra’s task manager is a private feature, it won’t inconvenience anyone if I ignore it.
I’m still interested, however, in the larger question of technological individualism. I suspect the ProfHacker community is particularly prone going things alone when it comes to tech. Have you been tempted to circumvent or subvert the technological choices made by your institution? When, as tech-savvy academics, should we go our own way technologically, and when should we do our best to support the technology being used by our colleagues? Let us hear about your own struggles in the comments.
[Creative Commons licensed photo by Flickr user Carly & Art.]
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22 Responses to Responding to Your Institution’s Technological Choices (an Open Forum)
billiehara - July 7, 2010 at 12:13 am
I have circumvented my university’s tech system, and I’ve done this at more than one university. (Ahem!) At my current institution, when I came here last fall, I was unable to get access to their course management system by the time classes started. By the time I had access, I didn’t have the time or the inclination to set up course shells in that system. Prior to having access to the CMS, I placed my course content on blogs. I’ve been using blogs as CMS for quite some time (even at my prior institution) because (1) they are easier to construct, navigate, and just deal with overall, and (2) my content and the some student writing is open for public consumption.* The only thing I don’t put online (on the blog as CMS) are student grades and evaluative comments on student work because of privacy concerns.The blogs worked well for me (I was used to them), and the tech people didn’t much care. The students, however, struggled a bit as “everyone else” (faculty) used the CMS and the students liked having access to all their classes on the same site/page.Interestingly, though, my current university is on the Gulf Coast and the threat of weather-related closings is quite real. A benefit of having course content on a blog is that if the university servers are under water, the content is gone (or at least delayed/compromised). When the content is on a blog, the content is safe…. if someone has electricity and internet access, this person has access to the course. (No more late homework!) :-)*I like the open access approach to course content and student-produced writing. For me, having the work on a blog is a pedagogical choicce. However, at my last uni, rumors were rampant among faculty that the owner of the CMS (I won’t name them here) claimed ownership of course shell content after a certain period of time. When I heard that– and afer I couldn’t get a straight answer from anyone dealing with the company– I pulled my content from their shells. I’m happy to share, but I don’t want the work taken/stolen. But this is a topic for another post.
gharbisonne - July 7, 2010 at 8:04 am
My university has made a long series of bad technology choices, beginning with a system-wide decision to adopt Notes as a university email system. I and another prof. found out about this two days before the contract was due to be approved by the Board of Regents. We actually persuaded the Regents to suspend decision for a month to consider the matter in more detail. Then the University Preident told the Regents in executive session that it was intolerable that they allow faculty to interfere with the machinations of his minions, and so the board reversed itself and approved the purchase. It was a technological disaster and a money sink, just as we had predicted.So I don’t so much circumvent the university as run my own system (mail and web server) in parallel with it. It’s worked fine for the last decade. I do use the university’s Blackboard system, where it’s useful. The latest direct conflict is in supercomputing, where the university is trying to direct resources away from laboratory – based clusters towards their own megaclusters, which are constantly down. The kind of computing my group does can’t easily tolerate frequent unscheduled interruptions. My own cluster has had exactly one unscheduled down period in two years (when a massive spike in the university-run power system got past our UPS and took out a DIMM, of all things, on one of our motherboards; we were down almost 12 hours)Survival, IMO, requires at least some degree of autonomy from the u’s IT bureaucracy.This is posted, by the way, from my own personal iPad.
richrobles - July 7, 2010 at 8:47 am
First of all, who’s at an institution where the IT is progressive enough to meet faculty, staff and student needs? It’s always a constant battle, especially if the financial model is based on acquiring copyrighted software and avoiding open source programs. On another front, another issue is whether the institution has the flexibility to handle multiple platforms.Aside from that, I’ve learned that the campus IT department is secondary to how I employ technology in my teaching. In my recent experience, I built a wiki for my students to access files, assignments and resources for e-portfolios. But during the first year of coursework, my students are constantly told by their other instructors to access the campus CMS (Blackboard) for everything. As much as I tried to circumvent the system, the student culture showed me that I had to meet students at their comfort level of computing. The wiki I created was a deviation from the norm and the students never accessed the wiki. Since then, I’ve re-purposed the wiki for other projects.
acavender - July 7, 2010 at 8:52 am
I, too, run my own stuff rather than use my institution’s official systems (our campus uses Zimbra for email/calendaring, and BlackBoard for the CMS).My choice was the result of concerns about storage space and about general usability. I rarely delete email–I just archive it–and storage space on the campus server is very limited. So I run my email through Google, using their feature that lets me send email from my campus address. I don’t need to share my calendar with colleagues on a regular basis, so in my case, being on a different calendaring system isn’t a big deal.As for BlackBoard: I tried to like it; I really did. But I found that it did far more things than I really needed it to do. What I wanted it to do, it didn’t do very well. And it’s just not very elegant. So I now run my own WordPress installation as my CMS, and I’m pretty happy with it.
infogoon - July 7, 2010 at 9:19 am
As someone working in information security in higher ed, I would just like to gently remind the faculty reading this that there are actually reasons for many of the decisions that your institution makes.Why do we put gradebooks in systems like Angel, Blackboard, or Banner? Because of professors who do things like put them in their personal web page space, thinking that a directory named “SECRET” will never be discovered.Why do we standardize on email systems on-campus, rather than outsourcing to Google or Microsoft? Because we can do things like filter mail to check for social security numbers, credit card numbers, and other legally protected information.Why don’t we just give you root access to anything you want to tinker with? For the same reason that you don’t ask IT staff to design your courses; because that isn’t your job, and frankly, having a half-broken Ubuntu laptop at home doesn’t mean that you are as technically savvy as you think you are.Before you start cimcunventing and coming up with toolsets, at least check with campus IT to figure out why things are the way they are. Most of us are happy to help if there’s a legitimate need, but there are often considerations that the end user just doesn’t think of.
heatherwhitney - July 7, 2010 at 9:37 am
I think a key issue in whether or not to circumvent is the level of competency that went into the institutional choices. In the past, I’ve dealt with CMS management that was outsourced to another institution. No one at our place knew what most of the features did nor really knew what/how more could be added. It led to a lot of frustration and I ended up choosing a lot of my own open-source tools, if only for the ability to be able to use the features I wanted and to make sure they worked.Ryan, I think it’s fantastic that you’re getting to try out a few new tools!
csgirl - July 7, 2010 at 9:47 am
My institution is Microsoft-happy, and uses a combination of Banner and WebCT for course management. These latter two are so unbelievably clunky, bug-ridden, and user-unfriendly that we are pretty much forced to find our own solutions. Sadly, for most faculty that means relying on email and a shared drive to manage their courses, which means they can’t take advantage of the things that modern technology brings, like online assignment calendars, discussion boards, and the ilk. I’ve ended up using a weird combination of Google (docs, Google Code, and the calendar) plus WebCT for my gradebook (because I do appreciate that grades should be kept on campus software). It is really annoying though – there are so many great applications out there, freely available – why do we have to be stuck with what feels like 1999 technology?
felicem - July 7, 2010 at 9:54 am
Ryan,Zimbra me!
acavender - July 7, 2010 at 10:16 am
I’m sensitive to some of the concerns that @infogoon raises. That’s precisely why I take steps to protect things like gradebooks–they aren’t just “out there.” I’m not convinced that students really need access to online gradebooks, anyway. If we clearly lay out a grading scheme and the syllabus and return student work in a reasonably prompt fashion, there’s no reason why they can’t keep track of their own stuff.Though I understand the benefits of campus standardization, I think there needs to be a balance struck between what will keep headaches to a minimum for the (often overworked and underresourced) IT staff and what enables faculty members to make intelligent choices about the tools that will best enable them to do their work. I’ve heard of places where faculty members have had to fight (sometimes unsuccessful) battles to have a Mac rather than a PC as their office computer. That battle isn’t one they should have to fight–nor is the battle over what software to use (and the ability to install it).Which isn’t to say that the institution should be expected to pay for non-standardized software. Nor should the IT staff be expected to support it. There’s only so much that IT can realistically be expected to do.I’m fortunate in my own situation. IT knows I’ve set off on my own. As long as I don’t (a) do anything that would mess up the campus server (I host my WordPress install off-site) or (b) ask them for support, they’re OK with that.
walkerst - July 7, 2010 at 10:21 am
At my institution, we say that we are happy to try to support whatever the faculty wish to use, but we can only promise really strong expertise in a certain number of systems, which are institutional choices. We use Blackboard, but as many wanted an alternative, we asked for intensive faculty input on other systems, and selected Sakai. Will we still help a prof with Moodle? Of course, but we cannot promise the same level of expertise as we have available for Blackboard and Sakai. I think that’s only fair; we simply cannot afford to train people in everything, and the students have a right to expect not too much of a mishmash. We find that most people using a CMS are okay with selecting from a suite of choices, and those who are not are usually capable of most of their own tech support.
edwebb - July 7, 2010 at 10:41 am
In deciding whether to use the default institutional system or do my own thing, I start with the task, not a predetermined preference. So I use the institutional LMS (Moodle) for classes where it does what I need, even if I might have aesthetic or other preferences for something else. Where I need something more flexible or open, I build a course in a wiki (having tried Wetpaint, now I prefer PBWorks). I use Gmail and associated calendar etc, and simply have my institutional email account set up to autoforward, so I benefit from the filtering to which infogoon refers above, but don’t have to use a hideously clunky front end such as Outlook. For scheduling, many at my institution have started to use Doodle, which works fine, although I’m experimenting with tungle.me and may start advocating for it if it works well. I sometimes use Powerpoint, with which the students are familiar, but also use Prezi, Diigo Webslides and other presentation tools, including the chalkboard – all driven by what will get the job done best. I think the point is to educate ourselves about the tools available. If there is a significant educational or practical advantage in the non-institutional options, and privacy and security concerns can be properly managed, then we should use them. But I stress the ‘significant’ part of that. I can run an introductory class just fine via Moodle. A more advanced class integrating student blogs, rich media, and collaborative projects probably needs something else (the wiki in our current version of Moodle is terrible, although I’ve heard the next version will be better – if it is, I will adjust). Gmail is simply a far better way for me to deal with mail than Outlook (or Thunderbird, come to that) and the institutional mail system.
wmfxir2 - July 7, 2010 at 10:57 am
I am glad that you are not subjecting your students to a new system with which they are not familiar. YOU would need to be the sole source of tech support and it would distract from the mission of teaching and learning. Imagine if 10 or 15 instructors did not like the system used by your school and each decided to introduce a different replacement for the calendar of CMS (LMS)or other such tool, each requiring a learning curve for all of their students!
acavender - July 7, 2010 at 11:10 am
@wmfxir2 I agree up to a point–pushing new tools on students can be overdone. That said, isn’t learning new skills–and learning how to learn new skills–part of what college/university is about?I’m not suggesting that faculty introduce new stuff just for the sake of introducing new stuff. But if the new stuff makes sense for what they’re trying to do in the classroom…
drnels - July 7, 2010 at 12:53 pm
@wmfxir2. I teach in a professional writing program, so keep that in mind as you read this comment, but you write, “Imagine if 10 or 15 instructors did not like the system used by your school and each decided to introduce a different replacement for the calendar of CMS (LMS)or other such tool, each requiring a learning curve for all of their students!” And my response is, “That would be fantastic!”One goal I have in my teaching is to expose students to the tools they might be using on the job. And the more tools they are exposed to, the better. I have had many students email me after job interviews saying that they got a job because of something they learned in my classes or in our program. Recently, a former advisee of mine was asked during an interview what blogging platforms she knew how to use, and I used Blogger in my classes. She got the job and was told later that this particular answer sealed the deal because every other person they interviews either said “none” or “the blogging system included in Blackboard 9.” They are a small company that needs someone to create a blog as part of the job (and use Twitter, which she also learned in my classes). And, yes, I know Blogger is not what most people would use, but she was still the only candidate to reach the interview stage who had done anything outside the university-mandated system, and it got her the job.In this economy, we might be doing our students a disservice when we limit the technologies to which they are exposed.
edwebb - July 7, 2010 at 12:59 pm
I agree with acavender and drnels – introducing students to varied applications and technologies is a positive good, providing we do not overwhelm them and we take the time to model/explain how to use them well. I wrote about this last year.
cliotropic - July 7, 2010 at 1:54 pm
I’m surprised no one here has mentioned the relationship between campus IT systems and the increasing percentage of contingent faculty on most campuses. I appreciate @infogoon’s concerns for security and legal protection around things like gradebooks, and I can see good reasons for relying on university IT systems for those parts of faculty IT.Those topics aside: in the real world, most term faculty may not know where they’ll be teaching next year (or next semester). Why, then, should any contingent faculty member put lots of her curricular eggs into one particular institution’s LMS, when the institution may or may not have any loyalty to her? If her content isn’t portable out of that institution’s LMS to the next place where she teaches, she’s not going to use the institutional LMS if she has any other viable options.If this state of things poses a problem for university IT departments or deans, perhaps they should rethink the budget savings they’re achieving by hiring contingent faculty cheaply. (Then again, hiring contingent faculty who make few demands on your campus LMS lowers your institution’s IT support costs, which some administrators might see as a win all around… except for the institution as a coherent community.)
daveapostles - July 7, 2010 at 2:02 pm
‘No one ever got sacked for choosing Apple/IBM/Microsoft/Blackboard’ – well, that’s the problem then.
crankycat - July 7, 2010 at 2:36 pm
I don’t let anyone else decide what computer or software I use – I’ve been a Mac user for over 17 years and my University is finally catching up. My students are free to use what they choose – I am reasonably competent at crossing platforms. In my capacity as Communications instructor for first year science graduate students, I make sure my students have experience in showing presentations from multiple operating systems and different types of projection equipment. It helps them be better prepared for whatever they’ll find at meetings and invited talks.
performance_expert2 - July 7, 2010 at 3:59 pm
Why do US institutions continue to pay licensing for MS Office when Open Office.org is available for no fee? I’ve used oo.org for… coming up on fifteen years. Not only do I prefer it over MS Office, I wounld not ever consider paying out money to a monopolist. And then there is that MS pushed the .docx format that caused a lot of disharmony, MS will absolutely do everything in their power to obstruct file interoperability and continue to not include .odt in their files formats.Seriously, can anyone say why 100% of US universities insist on sending a licensing check to one company in Redmond, Washington for MS Office? I just completely do not understand this, have a sort of “deer in the headlights” question mark about it.My mantra: “Computers are machines. You make them do things.”The narcissism “animate computer” “My Computer” “i-life” marketing -please, stop.
billso - July 7, 2010 at 4:45 pm
University administrators may have less flexibility when choosing their computing platform and software. I used to use Gmail extensively in the past, but I migrated to my university’s Exchange server 18 months ago. With Exchange, I have less storage space, so I must be more diligent about archiving old email.Many administrators and staff members at my university keep their office calendars on Exchange. I use my Exchange calendar heavily in my role as a department chair.On the other hand, I have an iMac in my office, and I use services like Evernote to help me store and find articles, publications and notes about my writing projects. It’s nice to have some flexibility.
billso - July 7, 2010 at 4:47 pm
One more point: students at my university will be migrated from a local email server to branded Gmail services this fall. Faculty, staff and employees will remain on the local Exchange server – and all instructors will be required to use the Exchange server or Blackboard messaging for course-related email. This has been framed as a FERPA compliance issue.
niolonra - July 8, 2010 at 4:54 pm
The comments about security are right on – Tech Therapy had an early podcast about all the workaround systems we use, each of which becoms a point for a compromise of security, and each of which is just as important as any given patch software vendors put out for their software to fix “critical” issues. I know how. Hard it is to schedule meetings when only half of folks have their outlook calendars up to date, as well as how annoying it is to get file attachments you can’t open or that look completely different on another computer… However, if I want my students to be able to see my calendar when they want to schedule an appointment with me, what system should I circumvent? We have nothing in place for this at all. Our IT switched us all to eCollege (with no faculty input) with about one month’s notice (which was academic break) for faculty and with little to no help for us in switching systems. After folks complained about yet another password to remember and asked for a single global log-in system, we learned this will never happen because eCollege passwords are not encrypted. Is this the secure system I should think twice about circumventing? And how long before we change that system? How do I shift my content out of that system and into the new one?When students asked us for a global addressbook, we faculty realized (from students) that when IT switched from outlook to google for mail for students, students lost this feature (and IT didn’t tell us this in advance). That was 2 years ago and we still don’t have a single solution students can access, or even a mix of up-to-date cumbersome solutions that students can not-as-easily access. I have tried to embrace the tech we have, but if it doesn’t work (or doesn’t exist), or changes without much notice or training… Then the breakdown lies between IT and the school’s needs, not between any “maverick” faculty and IT… I’m at the point that I think I should use the tech I reliably can, teach students what I can about it, and stop wondering about what IT thinks…