Tag Archives: blackboard

Where did I put my dunce cap?

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Have you ever been told something and in that exact moment you are wondering how it is possible that you ever lacked this information. You wonder if you really did in fact know this information. You convince yourself that you must have been aware of this nugget of knowledge, even though you know deep down that you really had no clue.

I’ve been a student here at U of T for nearly four years. In that time I have been enrolled in approximately sixteen classes. Each of these classes, except for one,  was accessible via Portal. Just put this in you back pocket for a moment while I explain what it is I’m writing about.

Last week in one of my classes my Prof. led us to the library for a research seminar with a librarian. This is at least the tenth time I’ve attended  one of these seminars. I always enter the experience a little suspicious that there is anything about the journal search engines that I have not already been told. Yet, every time I am pleased to leave the seminar with a new skill in researching.

Last week, I was perhaps a little more short-tempered than usual…bogged down with essays and fast approaching mid-terms I really didn’t feel like attending another research seminar. I can humbly say that I am so happy that I went.

Mid-way through this particular research seminar the librarian mentioned the library resources tab on Blackboard. Remember a few lines ago I mentioned how many courses I’ve had on Blackboard…take that out of your back pocket and now integrate it I know this little tale.

Okay so I was like, “ya, I know that tab. It’s useless. It’s empty or it just takes you to the Library homepage.”

Ya. No.

Unbeknownst to me this tab is actually useful. How did I not know this?

It is possible that at some point in my first year I clicked on the Library resources tab for one of my courses and it was empty. It might even be possible that this tab wasn’t active on all my courses. Whatever the case I had no clue how very amazing the contents of this tab are.

Apparently, when a Prof sets up their course they are able to request customized course specific library sources under the Library Tools Tab.

I’m four years in people. I’ve spent four years fumbling through journal databases for specific subject content. I could have been using this tab for four years!

I felt like a fool. I really felt like the kid in the corner with the dunce cap!

Well live and learn…right? I don’t know how many of you out there in the U of T universe are aware of this function on Blackboard. If you are then, stop judging me and if you aren’t then you’re welcome. I’m not a statistician, but I can confidently confirm that this little tab has cut the time I spend researching by at least 25%.

So I implore you…go to Blackboard and click on this tab. If you have a proactive instructor he will have customized this tab for you.

Happy Essay writing people.

-Lori

Ubuddy is my Buddy!

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School has just started and I’m already tangled up in a web of course announcements, emails from my professors and fellow classmates, newsletters from the university, events listings from associations I take part in, college newsletters etc. It is exhausting trying to keep up with all the different possible means of electronic communication from campus. I compulsively check my Utor email, my home email, then blackboard, and occasionally ROSI (if I’m waiting on test scores). When you add to this the attempt to remain in communication with fellow classmates for group projects and socializing, the inefficiency of electronic communication on campus is just plain annoying!

By providence, after leaving a recent focus group on this exact topic, I noticed a poster pasted to a pole outside of the Koffler Building. I don’t know why I took notice; perhaps I was primed to pay attention to what sounded like a new social networking site. The sign read Ubuddy.org.

Later in the day as I was checking my email, I decided to find out what Ubuddy.org was. Indeed, it is a new social networking site created by U of T students for U of T students. Ubuddy is what you would get if Facebook and Blackboard had a baby. It’s a social networking site, where you can talk to classmates, exchange notes, organize study groups and events, and find support from fellow students.

Charles Qu, president of Ubuddy, explained to me that the service was born in 2011, to a group of proud U of T engineering students. Ubuddy’s two main goals are to allow fellow students to connect and to share course information, questions and resources. Ubuddy currently has about 3,000 students signed up, 2,500 of them being U of T students, but Ubuddy’s platform is open to students from universities across the nation.

In July of 2011, Ubuddy revamped their website to offer more services to its users. There is now a textbook exchange, as well as tutor listings, club pages, and student job listings.

UBuddy's new more user-friendly Homepage

We are all well aware of the shortcomings of Blackboard/Portal and I really don’t need to tell you all about the many elements of the site that drive students and professors mad throughout the school year. In comparison to the sites provided to us by U of  T, U buddy is a breath of fresh air. It is a model that the university could look to for improving current web platforms.

Who knows, maybe someone important will read this post and realize how vital it is that we students have a single web platform that allows us to access all the online content we need to be successful and happy students.

-Lori

 

 

 

Blackboard got an upgrade?!

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Raise your hand if you noticed that Blackboard got an upgrade in the beginning of last semester.

When I first logged onto Blackboard in September, my thought was, “pretty”! And then I spent the next half hour playing with the customization. See how I get UpbeaT front and centre? Hee. Just click “Add Module” and find us!

Blackboard now looked more Mac OS sleek than Windows clunky. Sorry, is my Apple bias showing? Fine, the new Blackboard looked more Windows Vista than 98.

Apart from the cosmetic changes, the new Blackboard also has lots of new features, and a completely revamped user interface after you got inside your courses.

I popped by the office of Jeremy Graham, overlord of Blackboard at U of T, to speak with him about the new changes as well as about Blackboard in general. Look! He even has a board with all the updates he’s making to Blackboard!

Fun fact: Did you know he’s also the guy who changes the picture on the upper left corner? You know how it was autumn leaves last semester and it’s dandelions now? I love watching that change every season.

I told Jeremy that lots of students probably didn’t notice the change because we’re normally focused on going in, getting what we need, and getting out. Jeremy wasn’t surprised, “the point of Blackboard is to be as simple as possible, and if you’re able to quickly and intuitively get what you need then we’re doing our job.”

One handy new feature that Jeremy mentioned was the notifications module. Now, if you want to see whether or not your prof posted your grades when she said she would, or whether or not your slides were posted, all you have to do is check notifications to see if any changes have been made to your course, instead of going into the course and going to Tools > My Grades.

Of course, what I really wanted to know was whether or not we’re going to get a mobile version of Blackboard so I can check it on my shiny iPad. Good news, everybody with Apple gadgets/Android/Blackberry/Palm! Bb Mobile is in the testing stages. Yesssssss.

Now, I know not everybody is a fan of Blackboard, and I told Jeremy as much. Why did U of T use Blackboard to begin with?

“Before we implemented Blackboard, students had a fragmented view of their courses, assuming that their courses even had an online presence,” Jeremy said, “the University made an institutionalized decision to standardize student’s online experience.”

“We explored several different vendors, but Blackboard was the most user-friendly of the bunch.”

That’s true – the fragmented view bit anyways, I haven’t tried other class management programs so I can’t make any valid comparisons – I remember when I was in first year, my economics class was on CCNET, my math class had its own website, my string theory seminar class had a blog, and then one of my other class didn’t have an online presence at all. It was much nicer when all my classes were in one place the next year.

So why do some profs still refuse to use it?

“Well, we provide all the support we can, but we can’t force anybody to do anything,” said Jeremy, “some profs are wary of their intellectual property being accessed online, and we can’t impinge on their academic freedom.

“Contrary to the stereotypes though, most profs I’ve come across do give a damn about their students,” said Jeremy. “The only reason why some profs are willing to learn to customize a completely new platform is for the ease of their students. They’d happily stick to whatever they were using before otherwise.”

That’s also true. I’ve had two profs who flat-out refused to use Blackboard at the beginning of the semester but acquiesced after the class asked repeatedly.

Finally, I asked Jeremy if there was anything he wanted the students to know about Blackboard.

“Email! Make sure your email address is the utoronto one on ROSI. Blackboard will only send emails to utoronto addresses and you don’t want to be missing emails from your prof. I’ve seen emails that say things like ‘you’ve missed your last three assignments; come talk to me if you don’t want to fail this class’ and I’m cringing because the students are not getting it.”

I know some of us dislike UTORmail (another post for another day, heh), so we have Gmail forward our mails. I wondered if that’s okay?

“Yes, getting Gmail to forward is fine.It’s better to have a chance at getting your email than none at all.”

Well, there you have it. If your email address on ROSI is not a utoronto one, what are you waiting for? Go now and change it!

Cheers dear readers,
Cynthia

The Truth is Out There: Turnitin.com

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While I was slaving working on an essay for a PoliSci class, this beauty dropped into my inbox*:

Here’s the thing that bothered me: “TAs will not grade/return your paper if it is not also submitted online.”

I have to hand in my essay to Turnitin? I remember all these posters at the beginning of the year that said that you didn’t have to if you didn’t want to (unfortunately, the ones I remember seeing are now gone or plastered over from the recent elections). Now, my TA won’t even mark my essay if I don’t submit it? What is the Turnitin policy?

I emailed askastudent for help and Aska told me that there really isn’t a policy per se. Basically, profs can use it or not use it. I popped by the ASSU office with the above email and the rep took one look at it and seethed, “This is wrong, wrong, wrong.” Apparently, they met with the Dean just last week to ensure that students are not forced to use Turnitin if they don’t want to.

Well, that’s nice. But it’s still hearsay and not official. I wanted to know what the University officially says about Turnitin. I Googled a bit and on the Office of Teaching Support and Innovation website (basically, they support pedagogy at the University) found this:

Here are the important bits:

  • The use of Turnitin.com by our instructors is completely voluntary.
  • If and when students object to its use on principle, a reasonable offline alternative must be offered.
  • Students must be informed at the start of the course that the instructor will be using Turnitin.com (from the FAQ: “This ensures that students can opt out of using the program – something that we allow for here without penalty“).
  • The course syllabus must include the following statement:

“Normally, students will be required to submit their course essays to Turnitin.com for a review of textual similarity and detection of possible plagiarism. In doing so, students will allow their essays to be included as source documents in the Turnitin.com reference database, where they will be used solely for the purpose of detecting plagiarism. The terms that apply to the University’s use of the Turnitin.com service are described on the Turnitin.com web site.”

All right! So Aska and ASSU were right. I was intrigued at the last point, though. What does my syllabus say?

“Cheating and plagiarism are serious academic offenses. Your assignments will be checked against data bases to ensure that they are your own. We will be using turnitin.com in this course…”

Ah ha. Here it is. Apart from not properly informing my class about using Turnitin, this statement is also one of the three major reasons why the students who I’ve talked to hate Turnitin so much – the professor is assuming that I’m guilty before proven innocent, rather than the other way around. It’s like being the only suspect of a crime because the police never bothered to even consider that anyone else could have done it, so you’re thrown in jail before somebody clears you with an “oops, my bad, that DNA isn’t yours after all.”

Turnitin does address this issue in its text and calls this a mere “misconception.” They say the use of Turnitin is like having a referee at a football match. ’Turnitin doesn’t imply that you don’t trust your students or that you think they’re all cheaters. Turnitin is there to make sure everyone is playing by the same rules.” But the way my prof deviates from the established (and neutral) statement doesn’t help dispel the “misconception” at all.

The second reason, of course, is the concern over Turnitin’s possession of your intellectual property, even if you retain the copyright to it. Now, Turnitin’s documentation claims that their process is legal under Canadian copyright laws and verified by Miller Thomson LLP. Technically, Turnitin maps the words in your essay like a fingerprint and then compares it to previously mapped fingerprints; thus, not a true representation of your work. With a full legal team behind Turnitin (and they probably have a large legal team, given their controversial nature), I’m not surprised that Turnitin is in full accordance with the law, even if it doesn’t feel like it. Mike Smit, a technology, security and privacy expert, says that he simply doesn’t believe Turnitin’s claim that it is secure: “Over 200 security breaches have been reported by organizations more reputable than Turnitin since California’s breach disclosure law was passed earlier this year. What happens when Turnitin is next? ‘We’re sorry’ won’t help.”

The third is simple – how effective is Turnitin? Can it accurately detect plagiarism? There are many stories where Turnitin come up with false positives or where it’s simply been “easily tricked” by changing a few words around. That is a scary thought, especially if instructors start relying on only Turnitin to determine plagiarism. Even if CTSI says that “instructors must exercise their independent professional judgment in, and assume responsibility for, determining whether a text has been plagiarized or not,” you and I both know how lazy busy some profs/TAs get. Don’t believe me? Let me digress with a note my TA sent:

So what happens if you decide that you (or your prof) don’t want to use Turnitin?

According to CTSI, your prof can:

  • require annotated bibliographies from students
  • require students submit all rough work with their papers
  • require that students include the call numbers or web site addresses of all sources cited in their paper

I don’t know the extent of what your prof can or can not ask of you to submit, but there is a person from the Office of Teaching Advancement whom you can contact for additional alternative methods.

Our lovely Fariya tells me that she has a class where her prof asks for documentation instead of using Turnitin. Ironically enough, it’s mandatory, and Turnitin is not an alternative. Sounds good, right? But she says that it’s so much work that she’d rather just submit it online. Here’s what’s required:

  • Any notes (handwritten or typed) used in the composition of the essay
  • Any outline made in preparation for the essay
  • Any earlier draft(s) of the essay
  • A short (not more than one page) “bibliographic note” which sets forth the sources used and explains why you selected them and how you chose particular portions of each source as evidence for your argument

Doesn’t seem too bad and with some planning should be doable, but still, there goes another few hours you could spend doing another essay. If you have three essays due in two days (*ahem*me*ahem*), you definitely don’t want to do all that extra work. From reading CTSI, I thought the three possible requirements were either/or. That’d be easy, because I have so many drafts for each essay it’s kind of ridiculous.

I know, the irony of writing about anger and then getting extremely angry at the essay.

Anyways, I went back to ASSU and the same rep told me that if I didn’t want to use Turnitin, they’ll help defend my right not to do so. All I had to do was tell them and they’ll go to the department head on my behalf. Nice.

This makes me wonder, though, because like it or not, Turnitin is legit and the opt-out procedure is there. Just how is Stronger Together going to get it banned? And do we even want it to?

- Cynthia

* Important information highlighted, identifying information blacked out, names changed to protect the innocent, yada yada.