My girlfriend started taking a Masters in a college this year. In her course the faculty have shown some disorganization and computer illiteracy since day one but the latest one…completely killed me.
Besides their personal college e-mail, they wanted a platform to make announcements for all the course (20 students). I can think of a thousand ways to do this. Hell, even a Facebook group would be better. But no…
They have an e-mail address (like Masters_name@college.duh) where all the info is sent and EVERYBODY has the password to enter the e-mail and check the inbox.
That is it. I have no words. I think this is the most idiotic and dumb thing I’ve ever seen in IT.
my wife is a university senior lecturer — it’s likely they already have a system that can do this, that they have access to, works, and is non-technical; all they need to do is ask where it is.
I went back to university last year and exactly this. They have Microsoft subscription with all the bells and whistles, classroom, work material, homework, etc.
edit: I guess I just ADHDed in the middle of writing this comment. it was supposed to continue:
… zoom and all its options, plus a custom classroom web app that replicates some of Microsoft’s stuff and all professors use WhatsApp for everything, and email only for delivering finals papers.
I think it was blackboard that was used when I went to a further education college years ago. It supported announcements on it. I would imagine a university having similarly software as one of the reasons for blackboard was so we uploaded our assignments to it.
I don’t know if it’s any better than it used to be, but Blackboard was pretty universally loathed by the faculty when I was in college.
Dude I hated it as a student too. The only benefit it provided was a one time get out of jail free card per class. Intentionally corrupt a word doc and upload it. You just bought yourself at least a day to continue finishing your paper.