Mr Miyagi or Daniel-san?
Filed under: education, gadgets and gizmos, lifestyle
As an avid fan of the Karate Kid series I thought I might postulate on the teacher vs student conundrum that is the Blackboard.
If you don’t know, the Blackboard is an interactive communication system where students receive assignment information, mandatory readings, links to articles and participate in discussion forums. This often leaves us sans teacher, pressing on ‘chatting’ with each other – blindly stammering forward with complex issues until the next time the lecturer steers us back in the right direction.
Early adopters *waves* have been using discussion forums (the Social Media equivalent of the cork notice boards in Uni hallways) for years. Sometimes I feel my best learnings come from the Blackboard and that it seems you can get a degree using one. We post videos of our work on Uni YouTube channels, write blogs using WordPress and Blogger (cause they’re free!) and then we come back to the Blackboard and critically analyse each others work. It’s an amazing process but I often wonder out loud isn’t that what teachers are for? Am I not a student or am I teacher too?
I could be sitting in my office late at night of a weekend (sad, I know) pondering the preposterousness of Actionscript in Flash, unable to go any further. Banging my head leads to fist thumping and so on leading to bloody stumps (see my first post anime) so I have to go back to the ‘Blackboard’ and post my quandary online, only to find other students around the world at the same time, thinking the same thing.
Posting our thoughts & frustrations, sharing our experiences as we complete the same units often means that we solve each other’s problems which highlight to me how important this technology is in the process. Without all this gorgeous shiny technology and amazing Internet, how would I find the answers in my midnight madness?
What do you think – has communications technology made us all teachers and students? How do we discern a true Master in this age of information sharing?
My wife has the misfortune to be enrolled in a distance-learning degree program and therefore has to use Blackboard a fair amount.
Other than it being one of the worst discussion forums ever coded, the main issue is the one you raised in the second paragraph; students discussing issues whilst the person employed by the teaching institute to whom you hand over your cash does nothing. It sounds like you’re lucky; your tutors do come and steer you back in the right direction. My wife’s course has been characterised by lecturers completely ignoring students for WEEKS and then putting up answers to questions posted 24 hours before the end-of-semester assignment is due.
Whilst the early adopters might have dreamed of a utopian ideal where students and teachers share information and ideas, the reality looks a little different. It’s a way for Universities to bolster their fees by enrolling more distance students but provide less service and less actual teaching.
The corkboard in the hall was far more useful.
Thanks for the comments Dan and I completely appreciate the dilemma your wife faces.
I am in the same situation currently with my new subject this year (Computer Games Design) and the lecturer who has a different approach to Blackboard.
He feels that it is less his job to provide feedback via this mechanism and more for student interaction where I feel that as a distance learner I become more isolated without the lecturer’s guidance.
Each lecturer and subject has a different approach it seems. Works well sometimes, and not so well at others but I sympathise with your wife and understand her frustrations.
Thanks again for your input.