Category: Internet

At University of Tennessee, we use a digital solution called BlackBoard. This helps streamline communiction as well as enables us to cut down down on paper usage, besides capturing a lot of data for analysis and course improvement.

Basically it helps capture data for the following-

1) How often and ehen precisely did instructors announce change in syllabus, announcements, homework

2) Grades are posted online and students can see their grade with average and s.d of whole class ( FERPA – A federal law restricts making comparisons between students or telling them another person grades)

3) Lectures are recorded by Video ( and can be seen but not downloaded). Thus good lectures and courses can possibly be offered as digital courses or donated to suitable causes.

4) Instructors can see from analytics ( web) when and how often students referred to the course specific site. This helps them in understanding needs for students who may be lagging behind.

5) It has the facillity for polls to give constant feedback to instuctor during the course.

6) All slides and course material is shared securely without being accessible to outside web thus ensuring intellectual property protection for the course contents ( a policy I disagree with mildly- and sites like StudyBlue now offer students incentives to post the same content back for sharing)

7) Much better version control than lots of email floating with attachments or lots of printouts of slides per lecture. Digitization saves costs AND is good for student.

Eg A high school in Harlem or say in rural East Tennessee lacks good maths teachers. Using Digitization, Online Video and inexpensive solutions- students in far off schools can possibly share video lectures from the best private maths tutors ( at exclusive California or Dc schools). Technology can thus help bridge the technical instructor divide without  rampant labour cost destroying offshoring- and it is heartening to see some companies like SAS Education go for On Demand educational solutions ( though more SAS focussed and not basic maths or stats focussed) Even SAP has a great University partnering program.