I hate blackboard

Discussion in 'Online & DL Teaching' started by mattbrent, May 23, 2011.

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  1. mattbrent

    mattbrent Well-Known Member

    I know we have our "Complaint Department" in the other forum, but since this is relevant to online teaching, I figured I'd air my frustrations here.

    I am teaching a course online through my community college, and it starts tomorrow. I'm trying to finalize everything in blackboard, and the system is being a thorn in my side. It has deleted my content items, merged my content items without my asking it to, hidden my items so that not even I can find them, and now it's not allowing me to change the order of items. I just want to pull my hair out. Argh!

    That's all!
    -Matt
     
    Last edited by a moderator: May 23, 2011
  2. Randell1234

    Randell1234 Moderator

    I felt the same way when I started using Moodle and Angel since I had only used eCollege in the past. I have gotten pretty good with Moodle and, as far as Angel...well I may start drinking soon! Seriously, working through any of these is a process.
     
  3. truckie270

    truckie270 New Member

    Blackboard sucks. Angel is a little better, but there is a learning curve.
     
  4. apageor2

    apageor2 Member

    Care to explain the learning curve? I ask because I am looking at online teaching. Second, I did want to comment on this as I used to teach HTML classes via Moodle so I am familiar with that particular environment.

    Thanks for any helpful information you can provide. I hope your situation improves.
     
  5. truckie270

    truckie270 New Member

    Sure thing. I have experience with numerous LMS as both a student and faculty. There have been several systems developed as a result of the issues that many experience with BB which was one of the first widely used systems. As Matt noted with BB, there are numerous ways to hide and link content throughout the system which requires that you coordinate your settings pretty extensively so the student actually see what you think they are seeing. IMHO, if the faculty member has problems setting up a course, the student is going to experience exponentially more problems in using the course.

    My experience with Angel has been with two different institutions as a faculty member. One provided an already established course set up in Angel while the other gave the faculty a blank Angel shell to build the course. Much of the issues as noted above with BB is eliminated with Angel, but there is still the potential for many of the same things to occur if not set up properly, particularly if you are building from scratch.

    For example, there are several different paths that you can use to grade an assignment, lets say a discussion assignment for the sake of the argument. You can grade it through the discussion board itself as a "utility", you can grade it through the gradebook, or you can grade it through each individual student. Depending on the settings you have established (if the school sets it up they may not link the different paths or if you set it up you may be unaware of the different blocks you need to check) one way could work for grading while the other does not.

    When it comes down to it, when using Angel you are entirely dependent on the Angel administrator and their ability to support the courseware and set it up correctly. I think much of these issues could be reduced with more training, but many institutions do not have the resources to devote to getting faculty members to a mastery proficiency level.
     
  6. mattbrent

    mattbrent Well-Known Member

    Precisely! I know how to use Blackboard. It's just a matter of blackboard not allowing me to do simple things that I'm normally able to do. For example, I can't click and drag items to reorder them. It's just bizarre. I've worked around most of that though.

    -Matt
     
  7. douje

    douje New Member

    I think that BB is bloated, and so the only problem I have with BB is performance, this especially so in the gradebook. I only have experience with eCollege besides BB and eCollege seems very streamlined and therefore better perfomance wise as compared to BB.
     
  8. ruel314

    ruel314 New Member

    I do agree blackboard sucks but Angel is far more better.
     
  9. lalit galgate

    lalit galgate New Member

    I also agree with all of you who hates blackboard.

    DL programe is best way of learning.

    Class rooms are such bores.

    Sorry, for posting I will never post any reply on this thread.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jul 6, 2011

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