I Hate Blackboard

Sorry to our regulars (all six of you), but this is just me rabbiting on about the latest highly specific annoyance in my life over which I have no control. Sean will probably have something interesting on Wednesday, or we'll have a wake for the King of Prussia or something. To anyone from the U of O, read on:

The University of Oregon has been slowly integrating the Web into its classes. It used to be that I'd sign up for my classes, then get a few straggling emails telling me I was subscribed to various email lists. The lists would get a couple of emails a term, usually along the lines of:

okay, I think I have it wroking now.

The assignment for Wednesday is chapter 6, 

not chapter 16 as stated in the syllabus.

Have a nice day!! :)

Every now and then we'd have an active list. Sometimes the teacher would send out discussion questions. Sometimes we'd be required to post a message a week on the reading. Sometimes that insane girl (required by law to be in every class I take) who spends 15 minutes of class talking about phallic symbols and her own personal numerological take on the universe would figure out how to work her email program and send bizarre, disjointed ramblings out into the ether for all of us to shudder at.

But usually I'd just forget about the list until next semester, when I remembered to unsubscribe myself as the messages from the next class came in.

The lists were useful when needed, invisible when not needed. Along with a minimal class website listing syllabus and office hours, it was the perfect system.

So of course they decided to change it. The Blackboard system is akin to the heinous UBB software - a crawling coding chaos infecting systems across the land. Via an unintuitive interface of tabs and folders (how cute!), it makes everything several times harder. You can look at it here as a guest; though you can't see any courses, you can still get a view of how fundamentally irritating it is.

First off, I have to log in with name and password. This may say more about me than it does about the system, but that's just one psychic hurdle too many. This is Intro to the English Major, not State Secrets 499 (restrictions: must not be commie bastard, must have own bulletproof briefcase). I realize I can check my grades from the interface, but how about deleting that feature and allowing free access? Anyone who wants to check their grades daily is probably too busy making sure the iron isn't on/hands are clean/hands are clean/hands are clean/HANDS ARE NOT CLEAN to actually do it.

Being encouraged to check it daily (without any idea of when the admins will update, if at all) might actually work if I could just put the site on my bookmarks and visit it with an idle click:

*click*
No new Pokey.
*click*
No Bobbins.
*click*
No new sites on Portal of Evil.
*click*
No new English assignments . Sigh.
*click*
No updates on McSweeney's.
*click*

as opposed to:

*click*
type type type TAB type type type
*click*
*click*
*click*
ponder navigation buttons
*click*
OH GOD BLACKBOARD SYSTEM WHY DO YOU MOCK ME THUS?!
sobbing, sound of potato chip packet being torn open

Variable reward schedules may work for pigeons, Mr. Skinner, but like any good 3-year-old I want some damn consistency.

Once logged in, what's on Blackboard? The syllabus and some discussion questions, the first of which was passed out during the first class. Hey, I ain't no perfesser or nuthin', but which makes more sense:

1. Syllabus and all the discussion questions are typed up, printed and bound in a packet affordable to everyone.

2. Syllabus is printed out, discussion questions are put in an obscure corner of an unnavigable website. One week at a time. This sure keeps people from reading ahead or having all their knowledge objectives in one handy place, all right!

Option #2 also means that in order to only print out one week's questions (because you have the last week's, natch), you have to copy the text into a word processor, reformat it so it prints without screwy margins all over the place, then either print it out of your own ink cartridge or schlep over to the computer lab. That's way more convenient than just buying a packet.

It occurs to me that our esteemed professor is probably feeding us the requirements in dribs and drabs because - shock! horror! - she hasn't written all the reading questions in advance. Hey, I'm fine with that. If I weren't such a procrastinatrix myself I wouldn't be taking Intro to the English Major in my senior year. But how about making a normal webpage, with a link to the syllabus and a link to each week's questions?

I realize that another attraction of the Blackboard system is that someone who isn't Web-literate can bang together a webpage in seconds, but a class website wouldn't even have to be in HTML! The whole thing could just be a bare root directory displaying .txt documents and I'd be ever so much happier. The people in class now are the people who grew up on Usenet and k-rad BBSes. Wait for a few years to get flashy for the Web-bred people, okay?

But you know what would be an even better way to keep students up to date with the class than either an overdeveloped webpage or a bare bones one? A place that every student would check every day? A service that everyone who doesn't have severe problems already knows how to access and does so at every opportunity? An Internet application whose only prerequisite is knowing how to type and press "Send"?

Their email, that's where. Set up a list with open registration - hell, it's a one-line email, I'll subscribe myself! - and send out the questions to everyone. They'll print better, convey a sense of immediacy, and nobody will be able to say "I didn't check Blackboard today."

Sometimes the simplest solutions are the best.