I've been using Blackboard for years and I have all sorts of things I have written for classes over the years.
Recently I've been using Google Drive a lot -- partly because I use a Chromebook much more.
So I'm thinking that it would make sense to put most the materials I have created (longer pieces of writing, not everything) on Google Docs and just putting links to them on Blackboard. It makes it easier for me to keep track of what I have, and it also means that it is in an account that can't be taken away from me. I would have to make the materials shareable, rather then being behind the Blackboard sign-in process. But it would not turn up in search engine results.
I guess it means more clicking for students, but with Blackboard, students are already used to having to do a lot of clicking to get to anything.
Am I missing something with this plan? Do you keep your material directly under your control or do you put it all on Blackboard?
Sort of related, downer. Maybe not. I just completed a certificate training in online teaching. We use Canvas. My concern is that I can't use my Canvas course at another institution - right? So your plan might make some sense.
Inserting links to shareable files on Google Drive sounds like a fine solution to me. Perhaps an easier solution (for you) is to create a shareable folder for each course and store content for that semester's version of the course in the folder. That way there is just one link for students in each course to click on.
I will note that storing content externally to the LMS, with links to it, sometimes generates problems. There is always at least one student with an outdated browser version, wonky security settings on their laptop, etc. who will complain that they can't access the file. I always include a disclaimer in my syllabi that states "The instructor is not able to resolve technical problems" with directions for contacting our help desk. And that's how I reply if I get an email from a student.
You should be able to upload your Canvas course shell (which includes all the content you've put into it) to Canvas Commons (the "C" with the horizontal arrow on the left-hand navigation column). From Canvas Commons you can download the course and save it to your own personal storage as an IMS Common Cartridge File (.imscc). This is how you use a previously-created Canvas course at another institution -- you import the file when setting up the new course shell.
There might be something similar you can do with Blackboard, but since we stopped using it back around 2012, I don't know the steps.
At many (or all?) institutions, everything you store on Google Drive automatically becomes the intellectual property of the institution. This is just if the school uses Google suite (gmail, etc). Just throwing that out there
Quote from: revert79 on August 07, 2019, 05:32:37 PM
At many (or all?) institutions, everything you store on Google Drive automatically becomes the intellectual property of the institution. This is just if the school uses Google suite (gmail, etc). Just throwing that out there
This strikes me as unlikely. Whether your work product belongs to you or is a work for hire belonging to the employer should not depend on the storage medium but on the employment contract. That said, IP thieves abound and ones employed by the college may use this method out of either malice or ignorance.
Quote from: Hibush on August 07, 2019, 06:13:32 PM
Quote from: revert79 on August 07, 2019, 05:32:37 PM
At many (or all?) institutions, everything you store on Google Drive automatically becomes the intellectual property of the institution. This is just if the school uses Google suite (gmail, etc). Just throwing that out there
This strikes me as unlikely. Whether your work product belongs to you or is a work for hire belonging to the employer should not depend on the storage medium but on the employment contract. That said, IP thieves abound and ones employed by the college may use this method out of either malice or ignorance.
It's the official policy at the 2 colleges where I've been adjuncting (until recently). It's true, and apparently at many places.
To clarify, I don't mean the G-Drive belonging to the school. I mean my own personal one.
My schools use Microsoft OneDrive anyway, rather than Google. My experience with OneDrive has been bad, and Microsoft cloud apps don't work so well. So I would not use that.
Spork makes a good point, which is that each additional platform you have material on brings the corresponding number of students who have trouble getting on the platform, and hence trouble for you. I would keep it all on Canvas. I just have all my stuff on my computer and back-ups, and then upload it onto Canvas. Once on Canvas, it gets moved from course to course, but the original version still lives in my personal files.
Quote from: downer on August 08, 2019, 04:20:43 AM
To clarify, I don't mean the G-Drive belonging to the school. I mean my own personal one.
Blending work and home electronic storage can be a very bad idea. Several lawsuits recently indicated that when someone used a personal electronic resource for work that resource then can be considered to contain work-related property. The lawsuits that readily come to mind involved public officials using personal email accounts and personal computers to conduct public business.
However, I can think of other instances where employees of the university were not careful enough about completely separating their university work from their side-business that involved writing and the university successfully convinced the arbitrator that the blended files were all work product and therefore intellectual property of the school. The royalties from that widely used textbook went to the school. Computer code developed for that textbook was then used in the relevant intro classes for years without any additional pay to the professor because it was work product already paid for by the university.
My current employer requires substantial paperwork (ideally at the beginning of the non-work project) in part so that people are aware of the fact that blending personal and employer electronic resources can mean the employer owns all the work product related to that project. We sign paperwork upon hire indicating what intellectual property we're keeping separate that will not be used for the employer's benefit. Otherwise, everything I write related to why the employer pays me (computer code, notes, drafts, letters to the newspaper editor, outreach activities) belongs to the employer if I haven't formally, in writing with proper employer signatures, established the boundaries.
One of my scientist colleagues who is also a novelist annually fills out the forms indicating how they are separating their novel writing from their professional endeavors. I have received notice that professional activities I listed as potential conflicts of interest that may fall on either side of the boundary needed to be more formally documented as either work product or personal activities.
The worry about intellectual property is a fair one. But I've never heard of anyone in my field complain that their university has claimed ownership over anything they have written. And to be honest, most people don't care much about copyright in my field -- it is pretty standard to have copies of recent publications (or sometimes the last proofs before publication) on home pages. Very few people make any money from anything they write, so it is much less of a concern.
The worry about inviting technical problems is a bit more pressing for me. But the school uses Blackboard, which is a crappy platform, and so additional problems caused by the using Google Drive are offset by reduced problems by being able to get away from Blackboard for some of it. I will try it this semester and see how it works out.
One of the attractions of putting materials up on Google Drive is that then I don't have to copy and paste material from old semester shells to the current one, which causes lots of formatting problems in Blackboard. (There enough changes from semester to semester that just downloading the whole course and uploading it to the new semester does not work well.)
Quote from: downer on August 08, 2019, 06:48:35 AM
The worry about inviting technical problems is a bit more pressing for me. But the school uses Blackboard, which is a crappy platform, and so additional problems caused by the using Google Drive are offset by reduced problems by being able to get away from Blackboard for some of it. I will try it this semester and see how it works out.
My experience has been that most students never truly acclimate to Blackboard/Canvas/Etc, and are more likely to have used Google Docs/Google Drive in their life outside school.
Accordingly, using them often makes things smoother rather than inviting more technical issues, on both their end and my end.
It's the same thing I've found using Slack instead of LMS discussion board systems.
Asking from a position of ignorance (always the best position to ask from, yes?)...do I recall concerns about FERPA considerations with not using the school's CMS/LMS?
Or was that related to grading and discussion/chat line boards only?
M.
Quote from: mamselle on August 08, 2019, 05:42:56 PM
Asking from a position of ignorance (always the best position to ask from, yes?)...do I recall concerns about FERPA considerations with not using the school's CMS/LMS?
[. . . ]
Any digital records of grades (includes assignment grades, exam grades, etc.) should be accessible to students only via the LMS and whatever "student information system" (i.e., registrar's office) is used by the university, not through a platform external to the university that is created/operated by the instructor. Any instructor who allows access to grade information on a separate platform is courting a severe wrist slap by administrators.
The LMS serves a number of compliance purposes. Only students enrolled at the university, in that particular course, are assumed to have access to the course shell. Security, and thus privacy of student information, is assumed because of the need for an individual to have a username/password for a university-supplied account in order to access his/her grade records in the course shell. The LMS supposedly has security features to prevent hacking of that information by unauthorized individuals. Etc. I've even been told by librarians that placing copyrighted materials in an LMS course shell is ok because it meets fair/educational use standards, mainly because access to those materials is limited to students who have enrolled in the course and access to the materials ends when the course ends.
The above said, I periodically fight with IT staff who claim that ALL records pertaining to student performance can only be stored on university-approved equipment and software. Well, guess what, Microsoft OneDrive sucks, we don't have 24/7 IT support, and remote access to university servers frequently goes on the fritz at the end of the semester. So I'm going to continue to use my own devices and storage solutions to back things up. But students don't have direct access to that information.
Quote from: spork on August 09, 2019, 04:09:30 AM
The above said, I periodically fight with IT staff who claim that ALL records pertaining to student performance can only be stored on university-approved equipment and software. Well, guess what, Microsoft OneDrive sucks, we don't have 24/7 IT support, and remote access to university servers frequently goes on the fritz at the end of the semester. So I'm going to continue to use my own devices and storage solutions to back things up. But students don't have direct access to that information.
Generally the people who work for IT seem like nice people, even if they don't always have great social skills. But, as with many deans, their jobs require them to set out directives and justifications that are complete bullsh1t. I find that ignoring most of it works best, and that's what most other faculty seem to do too.
Quote from: downer on August 09, 2019, 05:22:13 AM
Quote from: spork on August 09, 2019, 04:09:30 AM
The above said, I periodically fight with IT staff who claim that ALL records pertaining to student performance can only be stored on university-approved equipment and software. Well, guess what, Microsoft OneDrive sucks, we don't have 24/7 IT support, and remote access to university servers frequently goes on the fritz at the end of the semester. So I'm going to continue to use my own devices and storage solutions to back things up. But students don't have direct access to that information.
Generally the people who work for IT seem like nice people, even if they don't always have great social skills. But, as with many deans, their jobs require them to set out directives and justifications that are complete bullsh1t. I find that ignoring most of it works best, and that's what most other faculty seem to do too.
Written as the people who have never had to fill out the compliance reports or deal with the fallout when the regional accreditors, auditors, or others did some spot checks and found enough problems to warrant going on probation with the accrediting body or having to post a letter of credit to continue offering federal financial aid.
Please, please follow the "bullshit" local directives related to FERPA, length and number of class meetings, and amount of work assigned during the term or anything else that comes down the pike. Ask questions that you need to ask, but don't just assume something inconvenient to you is just bullshit.
Quote from: polly_mer on August 09, 2019, 05:29:26 AM
Written as the people who have never had to fill out the compliance reports or deal with the fallout when the regional accreditors, auditors, or others did some spot checks and found enough problems to warrant going on probation with the accrediting body or having to post a letter of credit to continue offering federal financial aid.
Please, please follow the "bullshit" local directives related to FERPA, length and number of class meetings, and amount of work assigned during the term or anything else that comes down the pike. Ask questions that you need to ask, but don't just assume something inconvenient to you is just bullshit.
Yes, definitely, will do.
Where's the evil grin emoticon?
Quote from: downer on August 09, 2019, 05:22:13 AM
Quote from: spork on August 09, 2019, 04:09:30 AM
The above said, I periodically fight with IT staff who claim that ALL records pertaining to student performance can only be stored on university-approved equipment and software. Well, guess what, Microsoft OneDrive sucks, we don't have 24/7 IT support, and remote access to university servers frequently goes on the fritz at the end of the semester. So I'm going to continue to use my own devices and storage solutions to back things up. But students don't have direct access to that information.
Generally the people who work for IT seem like nice people, even if they don't always have great social skills. But, as with many deans, their jobs require them to set out directives and justifications that are complete bullsh1t. I find that ignoring most of it works best, and that's what most other faculty seem to do too.
Yes, until a hacker manages to get that information. That's a real mess.
Quote from: ciao_yall on August 09, 2019, 12:58:07 PM
Quote from: downer on August 09, 2019, 05:22:13 AM
Quote from: spork on August 09, 2019, 04:09:30 AM
The above said, I periodically fight with IT staff who claim that ALL records pertaining to student performance can only be stored on university-approved equipment and software. Well, guess what, Microsoft OneDrive sucks, we don't have 24/7 IT support, and remote access to university servers frequently goes on the fritz at the end of the semester. So I'm going to continue to use my own devices and storage solutions to back things up. But students don't have direct access to that information.
Generally the people who work for IT seem like nice people, even if they don't always have great social skills. But, as with many deans, their jobs require them to set out directives and justifications that are complete bullsh1t. I find that ignoring most of it works best, and that's what most other faculty seem to do too.
Yes, until a hacker manages to get that information. That's a real mess.
These days I just leave all grade data on Blackboard in its crappy gradebook. It does mean that I have to simplify the grading in ways that are not ideal, but grading isn't an exact science anyway, and it makes life simpler. Using Excel would give me more ability to calculate grades in sophisticated ways, which is what I used to do, but it's more work.
Student papers are mostly on turnitin.com but sometimes I download copies to my own drive. I am not worried about them getting hacked.
But theoretically speaking, suppose a hacker gets student grades from my cloud drive. Suppose they even make some changes. Who is ever going to know?
Seems to me that there is more danger of the university accounts in Banner of getting hacked. Isn't that what happened in this case from 2017 (https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/11/01/new-type-hacking-puts-professors-accounts-risk)?
Quote from: downer on August 09, 2019, 03:01:04 PM
Quote from: ciao_yall on August 09, 2019, 12:58:07 PM
Quote from: downer on August 09, 2019, 05:22:13 AM
Quote from: spork on August 09, 2019, 04:09:30 AM
The above said, I periodically fight with IT staff who claim that ALL records pertaining to student performance can only be stored on university-approved equipment and software. Well, guess what, Microsoft OneDrive sucks, we don't have 24/7 IT support, and remote access to university servers frequently goes on the fritz at the end of the semester. So I'm going to continue to use my own devices and storage solutions to back things up. But students don't have direct access to that information.
Generally the people who work for IT seem like nice people, even if they don't always have great social skills. But, as with many deans, their jobs require them to set out directives and justifications that are complete bullsh1t. I find that ignoring most of it works best, and that's what most other faculty seem to do too.
Yes, until a hacker manages to get that information. That's a real mess.
These days I just leave all grade data on Blackboard in its crappy gradebook. It does mean that I have to simplify the grading in ways that are not ideal, but grading isn't an exact science anyway, and it makes life simpler. Using Excel would give me more ability to calculate grades in sophisticated ways, which is what I used to do, but it's more work.
Student papers are mostly on turnitin.com but sometimes I download copies to my own drive. I am not worried about them getting hacked.
But theoretically speaking, suppose a hacker gets student grades from my cloud drive. Suppose they even make some changes. Who is ever going to know?
Seems to me that there is more danger of the university accounts in Banner of getting hacked. Isn't that what happened in this case from 2017 (https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/11/01/new-type-hacking-puts-professors-accounts-risk)?
I figure that if someone hacks into the LMS or everything gets erased, that won't be my fault and nobody is going to blame me (as long as they didn't use the password I left in the classroom or something) That's kind of what I'm looking for with things like this. I'm sure it would be a mess if something happened, but we'd all muddle through. What I don't want is it to be something caused by me doing my own thing.
Quote from: Caracal on August 11, 2019, 07:07:20 AM
Quote from: downer on August 09, 2019, 03:01:04 PM
Quote from: ciao_yall on August 09, 2019, 12:58:07 PM
Quote from: downer on August 09, 2019, 05:22:13 AM
Quote from: spork on August 09, 2019, 04:09:30 AM
The above said, I periodically fight with IT staff who claim that ALL records pertaining to student performance can only be stored on university-approved equipment and software. Well, guess what, Microsoft OneDrive sucks, we don't have 24/7 IT support, and remote access to university servers frequently goes on the fritz at the end of the semester. So I'm going to continue to use my own devices and storage solutions to back things up. But students don't have direct access to that information.
Generally the people who work for IT seem like nice people, even if they don't always have great social skills. But, as with many deans, their jobs require them to set out directives and justifications that are complete bullsh1t. I find that ignoring most of it works best, and that's what most other faculty seem to do too.
Yes, until a hacker manages to get that information. That's a real mess.
These days I just leave all grade data on Blackboard in its crappy gradebook. It does mean that I have to simplify the grading in ways that are not ideal, but grading isn't an exact science anyway, and it makes life simpler. Using Excel would give me more ability to calculate grades in sophisticated ways, which is what I used to do, but it's more work.
Student papers are mostly on turnitin.com but sometimes I download copies to my own drive. I am not worried about them getting hacked.
But theoretically speaking, suppose a hacker gets student grades from my cloud drive. Suppose they even make some changes. Who is ever going to know?
Seems to me that there is more danger of the university accounts in Banner of getting hacked. Isn't that what happened in this case from 2017 (https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/11/01/new-type-hacking-puts-professors-accounts-risk)?
I figure that if someone hacks into the LMS or everything gets erased, that won't be my fault and nobody is going to blame me (as long as they didn't use the password I left in the classroom or something) That's kind of what I'm looking for with things like this. I'm sure it would be a mess if something happened, but we'd all muddle through. What I don't want is it to be something caused by me doing my own thing.
Yes.
We finally had to go to an automated system for our Community Ed registrations. It was literally 100% manual and a massive security risk, not to mention grossly inefficient.
So, of course we had a very complicated system of discounts and credits that could be managed by the longtime staffers in the area. The new system simply couldn't handle the process, or would have taken a very long time to program. Our team had to simplify routines and, well, not everyone got the discounts they were going to get. We also adjusted our pricing and I made sure that I gave our team flexibility to give discounts "if anyone complained."
Good news is, credit card data is now 100% safe... or at least the responsibility of the processing bank.
Quote from: downer on August 09, 2019, 06:01:57 AM
Quote from: polly_mer on August 09, 2019, 05:29:26 AM
Written as the people who have never had to fill out the compliance reports or deal with the fallout when the regional accreditors, auditors, or others did some spot checks and found enough problems to warrant going on probation with the accrediting body or having to post a letter of credit to continue offering federal financial aid.
Please, please follow the "bullshit" local directives related to FERPA, length and number of class meetings, and amount of work assigned during the term or anything else that comes down the pike. Ask questions that you need to ask, but don't just assume something inconvenient to you is just bullshit.
Yes, definitely, will do.
Where's the evil grin emoticon?
It's no longer my problem to file any of that paperwork. Grin away!
Last year I used Google Classroom. This allows you to provide the same assignment to students, who can then type into it. It then automatically creates as many copies as students in your Google folder, with each students' notes in (This makes it different to the standard Google Doc). I assigned handouts on Google Clasroom, students typed into them and I had a record of their notes (which created some measure of accountability for note taking.) However, IT shut down the facility this year saying it was not compliant with FERPA. I asked if I could continue to use it only for handouts (no grades) but they said no. But I know larger universities use it.
Quote from: Mercudenton on August 14, 2019, 06:11:27 PM
Last year I used Google Classroom. This allows you to provide the same assignment to students, who can then type into it. It then automatically creates as many copies as students in your Google folder, with each students' notes in (This makes it different to the standard Google Doc). I assigned handouts on Google Clasroom, students typed into them and I had a record of their notes (which created some measure of accountability for note taking.) However, IT shut down the facility this year saying it was not compliant with FERPA. I asked if I could continue to use it only for handouts (no grades) but they said no. But I know larger universities use it.
I'm curious, is your school a google suite school? My understanding is that the google for education services are FERPA compliant, but the non-education specific services are not.
To the OP:
We just got a memo that all courses had to be approved to run in Blackboard. Moreover, any iteration of a course can only be poured from the approved master shell. (I've got some theories about why that particular clause was inserted....) My assumption is that storage outside the LMS would not be approved.
This is only for fully online courses, so far. I assume that hybrid and web-enhanced courses can run in any way, as long as it is FERPA compliant.
We have a mandatory meeting later in the month, required of all online instructors. My feeling is that the compliance and assessment folks are coming.
Quote from: dr_codex on August 15, 2019, 06:01:10 AM
To the OP:
We just got a memo that all courses had to be approved to run in Blackboard. Moreover, any iteration of a course can only be poured from the approved master shell. (I've got some theories about why that particular clause was inserted....) My assumption is that storage outside the LMS would not be approved.
This is only for fully online courses, so far. I assume that hybrid and web-enhanced courses can run in any way, as long as it is FERPA compliant.
We have a mandatory meeting later in the month, required of all online instructors. My feeling is that the compliance and assessment folks are coming.
How annoying for instructors. I guess there's also the question of whether people will actually attend the "mandatory" meeting -- there's a thread on that topic too! I teach just online for one school, and I never go there for any meetings.
I wonder where in the accreditation requirements it says that online courses have to include all their materials within the LMS. Would that be driven by compliance with disability laws? (The irony is that is is often much easier to increase font size and make documents more accessible in Google Docs than it is in Blackboard.)
I also wonder how strict enforcement could possibly be. Are they really going to employ someone to go over every online course and check that it complies with this?
Quote from: downer on August 15, 2019, 06:21:17 AM
Quote from: dr_codex on August 15, 2019, 06:01:10 AM
To the OP:
We just got a memo that all courses had to be approved to run in Blackboard. Moreover, any iteration of a course can only be poured from the approved master shell. (I've got some theories about why that particular clause was inserted....) My assumption is that storage outside the LMS would not be approved.
This is only for fully online courses, so far. I assume that hybrid and web-enhanced courses can run in any way, as long as it is FERPA compliant.
We have a mandatory meeting later in the month, required of all online instructors. My feeling is that the compliance and assessment folks are coming.
How annoying for instructors. I guess there's also the question of whether people will actually attend the "mandatory" meeting -- there's a thread on that topic too! I teach just online for one school, and I never go there for any meetings.
I wonder where in the accreditation requirements it says that online courses have to include all their materials within the LMS. Would that be driven by compliance with disability laws? (The irony is that is is often much easier to increase font size and make documents more accessible in Google Docs than it is in Blackboard.)
I also wonder how strict enforcement could possibly be. Are they really going to employ someone to go over every online course and check that it complies with this?
Yes. There's a position that was created about four years ago, at my university, where the person's job is to go through the LMS for fully online courses, to make sure that the courses comply with the requirements of the Assessment office, the Disabilities office, FERPA, General Counsel's Office, Instructional Design Office, IT, & Lord knows what else. Speaking to your earlier point, sometimes it's easier to let the higher-ups create a template, with all of these built in, and then faculty add content on top of the framework, because you don't want the aforementioned busy-body annoying you.
Quote from: lightning on August 15, 2019, 09:40:41 AM
Quote from: downer on August 15, 2019, 06:21:17 AM
Quote from: dr_codex on August 15, 2019, 06:01:10 AM
To the OP:
We just got a memo that all courses had to be approved to run in Blackboard. Moreover, any iteration of a course can only be poured from the approved master shell. (I've got some theories about why that particular clause was inserted....) My assumption is that storage outside the LMS would not be approved.
This is only for fully online courses, so far. I assume that hybrid and web-enhanced courses can run in any way, as long as it is FERPA compliant.
We have a mandatory meeting later in the month, required of all online instructors. My feeling is that the compliance and assessment folks are coming.
How annoying for instructors. I guess there's also the question of whether people will actually attend the "mandatory" meeting -- there's a thread on that topic too! I teach just online for one school, and I never go there for any meetings.
I wonder where in the accreditation requirements it says that online courses have to include all their materials within the LMS. Would that be driven by compliance with disability laws? (The irony is that is is often much easier to increase font size and make documents more accessible in Google Docs than it is in Blackboard.)
I also wonder how strict enforcement could possibly be. Are they really going to employ someone to go over every online course and check that it complies with this?
Yes. There's a position that was created about four years ago, at my university, where the person's job is to go through the LMS for fully online courses, to make sure that the courses comply with the requirements of the Assessment office, the Disabilities office, FERPA, General Counsel's Office, Instructional Design Office, IT, & Lord knows what else. Speaking to your earlier point, sometimes it's easier to let the higher-ups create a template, with all of these built in, and then faculty add content on top of the framework, because you don't want the aforementioned busy-body annoying you.
I wonder how common it is for schools to employ people to do that. Another part of administrative bloat. Can the job be outsourced to developing world employees? Come to think of it, seems like the teaching of these courses could be outsourced too.
My experience is that the enforcement of all these rules is very variable from school to school. (Also the interpretation of what the rules require is variable.)
My plan is just keep on doing what makes sense to me. At some point I guess I will be told that I can't do that, and so I will stop teaching the courses.
Quote from: eigen on August 15, 2019, 12:56:46 AM
Quote from: Mercudenton on August 14, 2019, 06:11:27 PM
Last year I used Google Classroom. This allows you to provide the same assignment to students, who can then type into it. It then automatically creates as many copies as students in your Google folder, with each students' notes in (This makes it different to the standard Google Doc). I assigned handouts on Google Clasroom, students typed into them and I had a record of their notes (which created some measure of accountability for note taking.) However, IT shut down the facility this year saying it was not compliant with FERPA. I asked if I could continue to use it only for handouts (no grades) but they said no. But I know larger universities use it.
I'm curious, is your school a google suite school? My understanding is that the google for education services are FERPA compliant, but the non-education specific services are not.
Yes it is a Google Suite School and I pointed out the FERPA compliance to the people who pulled it. Their answer was that they would need to monitor FERPA compliance on two LMS systems and they don't have the staff. I'm not sure what monitoring goes on, but their answer seemed to me about feeling they could not be responsible for two LMS systems with their resources.
That said I yesterday had a message from someone in learning resources that said Google are launching Google Assignments to live inside the LMS and that this would be available for use soon. It looks like this will incorporate Classroom products into LMS
Quote from: downer on August 15, 2019, 10:13:26 AM
Quote from: lightning on August 15, 2019, 09:40:41 AM
Quote from: downer on August 15, 2019, 06:21:17 AM
Quote from: dr_codex on August 15, 2019, 06:01:10 AM
To the OP:
We just got a memo that all courses had to be approved to run in Blackboard. Moreover, any iteration of a course can only be poured from the approved master shell. (I've got some theories about why that particular clause was inserted....) My assumption is that storage outside the LMS would not be approved.
This is only for fully online courses, so far. I assume that hybrid and web-enhanced courses can run in any way, as long as it is FERPA compliant.
We have a mandatory meeting later in the month, required of all online instructors. My feeling is that the compliance and assessment folks are coming.
How annoying for instructors. I guess there's also the question of whether people will actually attend the "mandatory" meeting -- there's a thread on that topic too! I teach just online for one school, and I never go there for any meetings.
I wonder where in the accreditation requirements it says that online courses have to include all their materials within the LMS. Would that be driven by compliance with disability laws? (The irony is that is is often much easier to increase font size and make documents more accessible in Google Docs than it is in Blackboard.)
I also wonder how strict enforcement could possibly be. Are they really going to employ someone to go over every online course and check that it complies with this?
Yes. There's a position that was created about four years ago, at my university, where the person's job is to go through the LMS for fully online courses, to make sure that the courses comply with the requirements of the Assessment office, the Disabilities office, FERPA, General Counsel's Office, Instructional Design Office, IT, & Lord knows what else. Speaking to your earlier point, sometimes it's easier to let the higher-ups create a template, with all of these built in, and then faculty add content on top of the framework, because you don't want the aforementioned busy-body annoying you.
I wonder how common it is for schools to employ people to do that. Another part of administrative bloat. Can the job be outsourced to developing world employees? Come to think of it, seems like the teaching of these courses could be outsourced too.
My experience is that the enforcement of all these rules is very variable from school to school. (Also the interpretation of what the rules require is variable.)
My plan is just keep on doing what makes sense to me. At some point I guess I will be told that I can't do that, and so I will stop teaching the courses.
Some of this is being done in the name of compliance. ADA especially, although there's a huge difference between "best practices" and actual accommodation of specific students. I raise that here; I'm not jumping into that hole at work, again.
Some of it is being done in the name of Regional Accreditor. Since it isn't happening with bricks 'n mortar classes, there is some skepticism about the rationale. My guess is that online courses are far easier to monitor. The LMS will be mandated for things like the syllabus, course sequence, and grade book for all courses. Several people will quit before this happens. Some of these people are principled, and feel that they are much better positioned to know if a student has mastered course material.
All of it is being done, in my humble opinion, because my administrators are LarryC's objects of study. They appear to think that another policy document or executive memo will prevent all of the bad actors from acting badly. "If only a committee had to sign off on this," they say to me, "it would go on no longer."
Draw your own conclusions.
Since I devoted a couple years of my life recently to both overseeing online education and the accreditation compliance, I will provide some perspective from the administrative front lines.
Regional accreditors are cracking down on online education specifically because of some truly egregious cases of courses/programs that provided almost no content and yet awarded credit. Adams State University went on probation with the HLC for those issues: https://watchingadams.org/news/hlc-places-asu-on-academic-probation/ has links to the evolving story that spanned several years. Yes, similar situations have occurred with face-to-face classes (UNC comes immediately to mind: https://chapelboro.com/news/unc/unc-placed-on-probation-by-sacs), but the focus is currently on online.
A key policy discussion still ongoing at the US Department of Education concerns the distinction between distance education and correspondence education. https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2018/08/08/new-debate-regular-and-substantive-interaction-between has a synopsis of what the distinctions are and why they matter.
I have no personal knowledge about ASU's situation beyond what is available publicly. However, audits on our own courses and discussions with my peers during the annual regional accreditation conferences indicate ASU wasn't the only one who has instructors who are significantly undereducated in what makes a good online course that is worth the money we're charging students and that keep us in compliance with being distance education, not correspondence education. I just posted on the QM thread and, oh my, the memories that brings up of what I observed when I started doing course audits and talking with colleagues as part of the peer corps for the accrediting body. Doing fully online well is very, very different from doing hybrid courses or posting supplemental materials for the face-to-face course.
During auditing, I've seen very interactive courses that don't meet the 3 hours of work per credit per week for the equivalent of a semester for federal financial aid guidelines because they were all discussion, practically no assignments, and we know the auditors are going to look because this is an accelerated course. Thus, a student should have been doing approximately 18 hours of work per week for a 3 credit class that is only 8 weeks long and there's no way that assignments + discussions added up to that much time for someone who is as literate as their contributions indicate.
I've seen fabulous courses that were self-paced with only student-initiated contact with the instructor. That well-designed course with a reasonable amount of work per week for a diligent student following the suggestions still puts us out of compliance because that's a non-authorized correspondence course, not the distance ed course we had listed.
I've also seen subpar courses that seemed as though the faculty just ignored all the parts of the course that happen in a classroom with human interaction in favor of using the same syllabus with essentially the same assignments. For example, I saw courses that were actually worse than if someone had just posted a syllabus with reading list/problem sets with answer key and scanned notes from what they would have written on the chalkboard as lecture 1, lecture 2, ..., lecture N. It wasn't rare to encounter courses with "read this assignment and make one post on the discussion board by <date>. Respond to someone else's post on the discussion board by <date>" and see discussion boards where the "discussion" was "I really liked the reading. One interesting fact is <...>"; "That is an interesting fact. Thanks for sharing!" as the whole assignment for the week.
Posting a good syllabus, but then not organizing the course in any way that looks like the syllabus was also much more common than I naively expected. For example, I saw more than one course that just had an alphabetical list of links on the front page like 83cwf329_20190519.pdf or newWedlecture.pdf instead of something useful like week4_reading_Smithetal.pdf or organizing by week, unit, or topic with either a useful sublist, folder, or separate webpages.
As for the accessibility discussion, building accessibility into the course from the very beginning of design just solves so many problems that are much, much worse if we wait until a student files formal paperwork requesting the accommodation in the next week. For example, the scanned PDF of the photocopied article that someone has been carting around since 2009 does not come across well. Many of us want a good copy that can be rescaled after download to see the pictures and be able to pick data off the graph. Many of us want the automatic titles that are part of a modern PDF, especially if we are using an auditory reader or want the hyperlinks to help navigate a lengthy manuscript.
One does not need to be legally deaf or blind to benefit from a transcript or captioning on a video, especially a non-professionally done video where the sound isn't quite right and the camera is shaky so it's not clear where one should be looking or what one should be getting from the video.
One does not need to be legally blind or using keyboard navigation due to physical tremors that make touchscreen or mousing hard to benefit from good navigation design. For example, link text should be more than one word to give some of us an opportunity to both see the link and select it. Pulldown boxes that require significant coordination to navigate all the submenus to select the one necessary item are no one's friend.
Thus, I would not be surprised if places with enough resources devoted some resources to ADA compliance and ensuring that anything that's easy to audit is indeed in compliance with everything likely to be auditing. The old-style way of checking on classes by random selection of syllabus or one-time classroom observation was much easier to Potemkin village if necessary than random draw from the already existing pool. Oh, and of course, those of us who care about quality of education view checking on online classes like observing an in-person class--something that should be done frequently for new folks to help them acclimate to expectations here and then can taper off once our colleagues are clearly meeting expectations.
I've sat on a committee or two that's been charged with coming up with standards for online teaching. And I don't doubt that there's plenty of abuse of standards by faculty.
I'm not sure that there's any reason to think that standards are violated online any more than they are in face to face teaching. It's hard to measure and compare. It seems that the growing supervision of online teaching is happening because it is possible to do so, while it is harder to supervise face to face teaching. (One of the factors is faculty complaining about the violation of academic freedom, which seems to happen less often for online teaching. Not sure why.)
So maybe the point is that those who violate standards spoil it for everyone else, resulting in a loss of freedom and moving towards an increasingly supervisable and regimented approach to online teaching.
I do wish that departments would deal with these issues internally, with chairs working to maintain high standards in all classes. But I don't see much of that happening.
Quote from: downer on August 16, 2019, 07:53:25 AM
I'm not sure that there's any reason to think that standards are violated online any more than they are in face to face teaching.
I disagree. Good online teaching requires significant amounts of specific preparation and careful curation of discussion a couple times every day. In contrast, good enough teaching in the classroom can draw on the professor's previous background with much less immediate preparation.
From my very first semester teaching college, I had an inverted classroom with significant amounts of online material including weekly quizzes so that the classroom was for small group work in a lab setting. My adjunct position was for hybrid classes meeting Tuesdays in person with online material substituting for the Thursday meeting.
The first time I taught an in-person class with only face-to-face lecture and assigned paper homework, I was astounded at how much less work for me prepping that class was. I didn't have to properly format all the materials with full sentence explanations. Instead, I could work a few problems on paper by hand interspersed with tidbits like "tell the story of the 4 laws of thermodynamics". Good video took far longer to accomplish than doing the same presentation live at the board or projected on the document camera.
Prep for an online class was reduced in later terms by uploading the last shell as a start, but updating the class was still more work than pulling out the binder from last time where my notes on what to add/substract/complement were already in place.
A good in-person discussion is much easier to guide than a good online discussion. Part of that is the time involved. When we're all together in the same room at the same time, I can more easily follow up in real time with student questions and the bar for doing well at that is much lower than when I have to write what I would say. I find that saying the words may be a minute or two, but a post to cover the same content is probably an hour or more with revisions.
When I'm the student, I can't always tell in person how much targeted prep for a specific class instance someone has done. I can tell who applied backward design to the course based on the syllabus and who either prepped or has significant experience teaching this course to this demographic. Online, though, a ton of work by the professor may still be inadequate for the students because of how much longer a good video or written explanation takes than the same dealie in person. For a one-time offering, people are more likely to run out of time/energy than for a polished course-in-a-box or for an in-person offering where one can get by with less formal prep.
I agree strongly with:
Quote
Others worry that for many for-profit colleges and others that embrace technology as a way to bring down the cost of instruction, the regulation is among the few things preventing bad actors from relegating already underserved students to course work devoid of human interaction.
"The big danger is that we end up with, essentially, online textbooks that cost $15,000," said Robert Shireman, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation and a former Obama administration official.
The more the federal government assures institutions that they don't need to provide human interaction, he said, the more likely it is that they'll develop entirely automated programs that are "basically just a textbook, computerized."
Reference: https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2018/08/08/new-debate-regular-and-substantive-interaction-between
So your argument is that teaching online takes a lot more preparation the teaching face to face, so people are less likely to do that work.
Maybe that's right. But I remember the first year I had a full-time teaching job I was exhausted. Then I build up experience. The first time you teach a course in any format, it is a lot of work. The norm is to teach a course face to face first, and then move to teaching it online, and so faculty probably do just transfer what they do in the classroom to an online format. But as online teaching becomes more prevalent, there may be more faculty who start off teaching online.
I think with most courses, faculty make changes each time they teach it, gradually solving problems that they see. So the teaching gets better with each successive time, other things being equal, until boredom sets in.
I'd want to see some actual comparisons of online versus face to face teaching to be convinced that the online classes are more often taught badly than face to face classes. And like I said, that's hard to do.
I have long maintained that the industry that MOOCs were disrupting was the textbook industry. Early digital content from many publishers was embarrassing. Now it looks like an industry cash cow.
To bring this back to the OP, one reason that people have their students pay for commercial content is that it comes pre-formatted for the various LMS platforms. Not that it's a reason to do it, but it is a partial explanation. It also addresses Polly's comments about online course design. It's no worse, in my opinion, from a face-to-face class with canned lectures that summarize textbook chapters. If any of you think that's gone away forever, you don't walk the same halls that I do.
I maintain, with Downer, that online courses are getting more surveillance, partly because it's easier to do, and partly because, as Polly argues, the online courses (as a collective) need it more. But there's also a kind of "uncertainty effect", too. Anyone who has sat in on another class as an examiner knows that one's mere presence transforms the dynamic. This is much less likely in an online class, although I'm seriously considering adding a disclaimer to mine so that the students know that their posts can and will be read by various administrators and staff members, for reasons that have nothing to do with their course performance. My colleagues often forget that our email is public, not private; I suspect that my students routinely forget that, too. If that has a chilling effect on conversation, well, take it up with the monitors, please.
Quote from: polly_mer on August 17, 2019, 05:30:24 AM
The more the federal government assures institutions that they don't need to provide human interaction, he said, the more likely it is that they'll develop entirely automated programs that are "basically just a textbook, computerized."
This. 100% This.
I agree wholeheartedly with Polly.
The "quality range" is much more dynamic (in the negative) with fully online instruction. Perfect examples of this are found at my current institution. We have many, many online professors that merely "slap it in a can" and leave it alone. All assessments are fully automated. All content is fully automated. The professor is unreachable. The professor's disengagement tends to only increase over time. Automated content is rarely (or never) updated. Assessments are rarely (or never) updated. Assessments are reduced in number. Assessment access (e.g. easier cheating) is enhanced. Assessment security becomes lax or nonexistent. Discussion boards are not monitored. Discussion boards are removed. Absentee professor doctors grades at end of term to ensure no complaints reach the administration. Or... everyone cheats in absentee professor's abandonware class to receive passing or high grades. Class enrollments are high. Ratemyprofessor ratings are high. The college administration is happy with the reliable tuition dollars rolling and the political pressure relieved to "retain/complete" students. No one asks questions. The absentee "money maker" professors are put into a protected class by the administration. They stop coming to campus, going to department meetings, or even holding office hours. So long as their online classes fill the professors are untouchable. The absentee online professors request overloads to teach additional online courses. The college administration eagerly agrees. The cancer grows.
Many of these problems are certainly not exclusive to online instruction. It is just that it is much easier for these problems to manifest and magnify with online instruction. Having to regularly bear witness to this has made me very disillusioned for the future of the Academy.