Putting my teaching materials on Google Drive rather than Blackboard

[downer]

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?

[Zinoma]

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.

[spork]

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.

[revert79]

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

[Hibush]

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.

[revert79]

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.

[downer]

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.

[Hegemony]

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.

[polly_mer]

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.

[downer]

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.)

[eigen]

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.

[mamselle]

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.

[spork]

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.

[downer]

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.

[polly_mer]

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.