The Use (and Misuse) of Education Technology
I’m not quite sure I understand Laura Gibb’s ire in this Xplana article, as I’ve always been an advocate of not driving a nail with a saw or cutting a board with a hammer. E.g. right tools for the right goals.
Course management systems are designed to provide an authenticated, protected online environment in which to deliver and manage a course. Every course management system I’ve seen has the capability to make the content available to the public or to link from within the secured environment to content outside that environment. These systems are not designed to be content repositories, nor are they designed to be content-authoring or “website”-authoring tools.
I think it’s important to make a distinction between the course environment and the content or the content authoring. The course management environment uses authentication to assign role-based permissions, deliver assessments, track student assignments and grades, identify users in communication spaces, prevent abusive behavior from people not enrolled in the course, etc. While most have some simple forms-based content authoring tools, the vast majority of content is (and should be) authored outside of the course management environment. Securing the course environment — the virtual space in which the teaching and learning is delivered — doesn’t have to affect the openness or availability of the content unless the only place you choose to store the content is inside the secured environment.
I think we all know how products like Blackboard and WebCT are marketed to faculty: they are marketed as a TOTAL solution, for doing assessments, running discussion boards, AND doing content management. One of the most pernicious effects of Blackboard, in fact, is persuading faculty members that they can do everything in Word and Powerpoint, that they do not need to know HTML, that they do not need to know anything about webpages at all in order to share content with their students over the web, thanks to Blackboard. The very strong emphasis that WebCT is putting on its new drag-and-drop WebDAV file management is very similar: just plunk your content here inside WebCT and manage it all from inside your course. Here is a quote from the Blackboard website, an Overview of the Learning System (http://www.blackboard.com/highered/ls/index.htm):“The industry’s most widely deployed teaching and learning environment, the Blackboard Learning System features a robust environment for content management and sharing, online assessments, student tracking, assignment and portfolio management, and virtual collaboration.” Content management and sharing is the FIRST ITEM IN THE LIST. I doubt that is by accident.