Blogs as Course Management Systems: Is their biggest advantage also their achille's heel?
Elizabeth Lane Lawley, assistant professor at the
department of information technology at Rochester Institute of Technology, has
begun
an experiment using Moving Type as a course management system for her
"Introduction to Multimedia" class. Already, her early efforts demonstrate the
unique advantages blogs hold over conventional course management systems. But
her work also uncovers what commercial course management systems offer that
blogs lack.
Lawley is not alone in looking to blogs as a
potential escape from the "course as online powerpoint slide" stranglehold of
today's commercial course management systems. Charles
Lowe of Cyberdash.com recently published an
account of his own experience using open source weblogs (PostNuke) to
support his online writing class; in a companion
piece he compares PostNuke to Blackboard, and finds Blackboard
lacking.
And he is not the only one coming to this conclusion. Laura Gibbs, in her blog post "Blackboard, Students and Publishing on the Web," pretty much captured the differences between a blog-based online learning experience and one provided by the traditional vendors when she said "Blackboard lets faculty members share documents with students, but it does nothing to promote web publishing by students." In expanding on this point, she relates that:
And, just in case her lucid review hasn't adequately made the point for the reader, Gibbs puts the final nail in the coffin when she concludes:
Now if this isn't enough, click on over to a recent Slashdot thread discussing the growing numbers of open-source course management systems. A common theme running through the discussion (beyond some very serious Blackboard and WebCT bashing) is the same emphasis on community and collaboration you hear evangelized by Brigss, Lowe, Lowley, and other blog advocates.
And so we see why educators are so excited by blogs. For the first time, they have an easy-to-use tool that provides them and their students an authentic voice in the online classroom previously dominated by syllabi and class notes. And equally important, this newfound voice isn't a glued-on afterthought one finds by jumping out to the "class bulletin board," but rather is an equal citizen to the professor's powerpoint slide, word document, and other forms of traditional "course content." What on one had sounds insanely trivial is in fact a paradigm shift in online learning environments: blogs empower students to be co-publishers of the course and to easily comment on, react to, and debate any (teacher or student) contributed element.
So then, if the revolution is over, can we all return to our computers and live peacefully (and productively) in the new eLearning world order?
In the best "I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him" mode, the answer is, unfortunately, no.
For as it turns out, community-driven blogs lack a critical dimension provided by their commercial, institutional-level brethren: class management.
Charles Lowe himself points out how systems like Blackboard (and WebCT, eCollege, Prometheus, and others) excel in their class management capabilities. Says Lowe:
The lack of "class management" tools Lowe describes is already apparent in Lawley's emerging class weblog. For example, pretend for a moment that you are a new student in Professor Lawley's class. On your first visit to your online "classroom" you may have the following questions foremost in your mind:
And, as a student, each passing day in the class will bring a host of other needs and wants:
Looking at Lawley's class weblog, you'll find that many of these questions would go unanswered (or the answers would be hopelessly lost in the morass of teacher/student posts). Worse yet, using a blog as the course management environment, many of these questions would be unsupportable.
As the instructor, if you were lucky enough to also be a practicing programmer in addition to an english professor, you might be able to address these needs using some fancy Movable Type macros and a lot of Perl/CGI/MySQL sweat (for the student: "Click here to see your private grade-book and/or dispute a grade"... "Click here to request a drop from the University registrar"... "Click here to see a listing of all your final grade-able assignments;" and for the instructor, "Click here to import your class roster from the registrar"... "Click here to see who is late handing-in Assignment 5"... "Click here to turn in an official final grade to the registrar and report it to the student"). However, if you imagine 30 students in your class instead of 5, and further, you offer two simultaneous sections five times a year, and your class is but one of 50 that are offered during the current term by the University that employs you (and registers your students, and collects their money, and attends to their financial aid, and manages their drops and extensions), then you can quickly see how the very qualities that make blogs so attractive (lightweight, decentralized personal publishing) also bring about their downfall as an effective class management tool. Rather than spending her time engaging and mentoring students in authentic online community or practice, an instructor in this environment will spend the bulk of her time playing educational housekeeper.
The moral of the story? While blogs and other "lightweight" community publishing systems will surely find their way into the motivated educator's hands, their impact will remain limited until they are married to the more mundane (and decidedly not pedagogically-valued) class management features that are the bread and butter of "traditional" course management systems.
The interesting question then becomes, from which end of the spectrum will this post-revolution revolution emerge? Will blogs grow class management wings? Or will commercial course management systems shove blogs inside the courses alongside their documents and folders? Of course, don't count out the possibility that an entirely new species may emerge, one that is natively optimized along both dimensions! Hmmm, now that's an intriguing thought!
And he is not the only one coming to this conclusion. Laura Gibbs, in her blog post "Blackboard, Students and Publishing on the Web," pretty much captured the differences between a blog-based online learning experience and one provided by the traditional vendors when she said "Blackboard lets faculty members share documents with students, but it does nothing to promote web publishing by students." In expanding on this point, she relates that:
An instructor using Blackboard is able to create a number of document folders, labeled with some pre-assigned names: Course Documents, Assignments, Lectures, Labs, and so on. These folders are linked to a set of navigation buttons that always appear on the left-hand side of the screen. Inside those folders can be other folders, which can contain documents of various sorts - HTML documents, but also Word, Powerpoint, Excel and so on. This is the equivalent of the teacher giving handouts during class, or displaying some kind of presentation in the classroom. It's tedious, but it works. Instead of a classroom presentation or a handout, the instructor can now share that information with the students over the web. But what are the students able to do? Does the student have a document folder where they can upload their course project? No, they do not. With Blackboard, the only way that a student can share documents with other students in the class - correct me if I am wrong, somebody! - is by using the "attachment" feature in the Discussion Board. In other words, the student can create a posting in a Discussion Board, and attach a document to that posting. ... The Discussion Board is for discussion. So let the students discuss! But the Discussion Board is not for web publishing - there should be a better way for students to publish on the web than by attaching documents to Discussion Board posts.
And, just in case her lucid review hasn't adequately made the point for the reader, Gibbs puts the final nail in the coffin when she concludes:
In other words: I don't think anybody at Blackboard has ever talked to a student. So no wonder they don't worry about helping students to publish on the web.
Now if this isn't enough, click on over to a recent Slashdot thread discussing the growing numbers of open-source course management systems. A common theme running through the discussion (beyond some very serious Blackboard and WebCT bashing) is the same emphasis on community and collaboration you hear evangelized by Brigss, Lowe, Lowley, and other blog advocates.
And so we see why educators are so excited by blogs. For the first time, they have an easy-to-use tool that provides them and their students an authentic voice in the online classroom previously dominated by syllabi and class notes. And equally important, this newfound voice isn't a glued-on afterthought one finds by jumping out to the "class bulletin board," but rather is an equal citizen to the professor's powerpoint slide, word document, and other forms of traditional "course content." What on one had sounds insanely trivial is in fact a paradigm shift in online learning environments: blogs empower students to be co-publishers of the course and to easily comment on, react to, and debate any (teacher or student) contributed element.
So then, if the revolution is over, can we all return to our computers and live peacefully (and productively) in the new eLearning world order?
In the best "I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him" mode, the answer is, unfortunately, no.
For as it turns out, community-driven blogs lack a critical dimension provided by their commercial, institutional-level brethren: class management.
Charles Lowe himself points out how systems like Blackboard (and WebCT, eCollege, Prometheus, and others) excel in their class management capabilities. Says Lowe:
I have to admit. Blackboard is an effective virtual classroom space that serves the needs of many institutions. It provides a password, gated community where students see a uniform interface for all of their classes. It has the necessary administration tools that make teaching online easier: grading lists, testing modules, a GUI email interface for teachers and student to send emails, and automatic student registration from registrar records. The institution sets up and administrates these spaces.
The lack of "class management" tools Lowe describes is already apparent in Lawley's emerging class weblog. For example, pretend for a moment that you are a new student in Professor Lawley's class. On your first visit to your online "classroom" you may have the following questions foremost in your mind:
- How long does the class run?
- How does the class "work?"... online lectures? (if so, how many, when?); Exams? (what kind?, how many?, when?, what does each count towards my grade?, how do I take them?, Where do I submit them?)
- How do I hand in assignments? (where?, when?); How do I in turn receive feedback? (is it private?); How/where/when are those assignments graded?; Can anyone see my grades?
- If there are collaborative group projects in the class, how do they work? (who's in my group?, how do I interact with them?, when can I interact with them?, can we meet synchronously? can I easily switch groups if I need to?)
And, as a student, each passing day in the class will bring a host of other needs and wants:
- What do I, should I, do today?
- How do I keep track of everything that's going on in the class? (who said what,? to whom?, when?)
Looking at Lawley's class weblog, you'll find that many of these questions would go unanswered (or the answers would be hopelessly lost in the morass of teacher/student posts). Worse yet, using a blog as the course management environment, many of these questions would be unsupportable.
As the instructor, if you were lucky enough to also be a practicing programmer in addition to an english professor, you might be able to address these needs using some fancy Movable Type macros and a lot of Perl/CGI/MySQL sweat (for the student: "Click here to see your private grade-book and/or dispute a grade"... "Click here to request a drop from the University registrar"... "Click here to see a listing of all your final grade-able assignments;" and for the instructor, "Click here to import your class roster from the registrar"... "Click here to see who is late handing-in Assignment 5"... "Click here to turn in an official final grade to the registrar and report it to the student"). However, if you imagine 30 students in your class instead of 5, and further, you offer two simultaneous sections five times a year, and your class is but one of 50 that are offered during the current term by the University that employs you (and registers your students, and collects their money, and attends to their financial aid, and manages their drops and extensions), then you can quickly see how the very qualities that make blogs so attractive (lightweight, decentralized personal publishing) also bring about their downfall as an effective class management tool. Rather than spending her time engaging and mentoring students in authentic online community or practice, an instructor in this environment will spend the bulk of her time playing educational housekeeper.
The moral of the story? While blogs and other "lightweight" community publishing systems will surely find their way into the motivated educator's hands, their impact will remain limited until they are married to the more mundane (and decidedly not pedagogically-valued) class management features that are the bread and butter of "traditional" course management systems.
The interesting question then becomes, from which end of the spectrum will this post-revolution revolution emerge? Will blogs grow class management wings? Or will commercial course management systems shove blogs inside the courses alongside their documents and folders? Of course, don't count out the possibility that an entirely new species may emerge, one that is natively optimized along both dimensions! Hmmm, now that's an intriguing thought!
Posted: Wed - August 6, 2003 at 12:12 AM
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Total entries in this category: 24
Published On: Oct 08, 2005 10:41 AM
Total entries in this category: 24
Published On: Oct 08, 2005 10:41 AM