The Lack of Usability in Campus/University Supported Applications That Undergird Instruction

I'm on a Maslow kick as of late.  In this post I'm going to talk mainly about applications that learning technologists on campus tend to ignore, because they are outside the scope of their direct responsibility.  But instructors get waylaid by these applications, for pretty obvious reasons.  If you believe in Maslow's hierarchy of needs, this means that instructors get stuck on lower rungs of the hierarchy and as a result don't self-actualize, which in this context means they don't use the instructional technology in a creative way that might enhance learning.  They are too busy coping with other accommodations with the technology to do that.

Here I will take on the Student Information System, University email for students, and if I've got any energy left over then I'll consider the hosting of files so they are publicly available as well.  My complaints are not new.  And that's a big part of the point.  Why hasn't there been innovation so what was perceived as a problem 10 years ago isn't a problem now?

Let's get at it.  My university uses Banner as their SIS.  It has the unfortunate feature of treating the section as the unit of measurement rather than the course as unit of measurement.  If you teach a class where there is only one section, this is no biggie.  But if you teach a class that has multiple sections which are cross listed, as I do, then there are several problems.  The biggest one right now for me is the way quotas are set.  The room I teach in has 50 seats for students.  That is an obvious quota.  The software should not have more than 50 students registered for the class.  But I have one undergrad section and one grad section cross listed, as do several other upper level undergraduate classes offered in Economics.  Though the classes are primarily intended for undergraduates, Masters students are welcome to take the classes as a way to round out their degrees.  Banner forces one quota for the undergrad section and another quota for the grad section.  The two add up to 50.  If the undergrad fills while the grad section has openings, then more undergraduate students can't register for the class, unless the quota is manually reset. In fact, this is happening for many of the upper level courses being offered.  I did a tally of this last Thursday for 400-level courses in Economics using data from the Course Explorer. At the time there were no empty seats for undergrads, while there were 11 grad sections with openings across the various offerings.

This situation created an ethical conundrum for me.  I'd rather teach a smaller class and, in fact, my course has never had more than about 30 students in the past.  But there are more students now taking such classes and possibly fewer offerings overall (of that I'm less sure).  Do I have some responsibility to those undergraduate students who want to add a 400-level class in Economics by increasing the quota on my undergraduate section?  If there were a quota on the room only, not on the individual sections which are cross listed, that decision would be taken out of my hands.  As it is now, it looks like the Economics Department is giving preferential treatment to the grad students, as empty seats are being held for them while the undergrads don't have any options.   Even if in fact there is some preference for the grad students, is this the sort of message that the department wants to broadcast?  The software forces this.   It would be much better if the software allowed students to add as long as the room wasn't full, regardless of which section the students joined.  It's amazing that this simple function is not supported.

Coupled with this, alas, I can't view both sections pooled in one view, nor can I readily download data from Banner for import into Excel.  These are obvious deficiencies of the software.  The campus provides work arounds for these limitations.   The LMS can be viewed as an alternative roster service.  And DMI also offers such a service.  But the services are imperfect substitutes.  For example, while DMI does list a second major for the students, it doesn't list a minor.  Also, the home address isn't provided.  This is particularly useful to identify international students and out-of-state domestic students.  So, while it would be nice to go to just once source for the roster information, I end up using all three sources.  Before the semester starts I rely mainly on Banner, as the information is most current there.  DMI does color code recent adds and drops, which is useful for the first 10 days of the semester.  After that I use the LMS for it's electronic grade book function. I've been doing this for so long that I'm used to it.  But that doesn't make it right.  A newbie instructor is likely to be frustrated by this environment.

Let me turn to email/student identity.  While I've not done a careful sampling, my general impression is that about 50% of my students use non-university email as their primary form of communication.  There are two obvious reasons why.  One is continuity from before being a students on campus and after they graduate.  If they've already been using their email for external to the university functions (and I will note that a quick check of my current roster has students with other external sites - LinkedIn mainly, some other sites too) then it makes sense from their perspective to continue with that.  The other use is so they can change their screen name to a preferred name that is different from what is on their university record. This is particularly important for international students who want to use an Americanized name will studying in the U.S.  Our business practice at the university, however, doesn't accommodate either of these uses.  Instead it is up to each instructor to adjust or not.

I will note that ATLAS has a photo roster service that is potentially quite nice.  I gather that it is pulling data from Banner and the I-Card (student ID) databases.  So in addition to name and photo it also offers the student's UIN (University ID Number).  If students were allowed to enter a preferred name into one of of these databases, then that information could be pulled as well.  In my class UIN has no function.  Addressing students by their preferred names would have real value.

Now let me briefly talk about my use of Box.com for my course files, rather than use the LMS.  This allows the files to be made publicly available, so my course site becomes a mini OER.  When these files are associated with a YouTube video, they do get external access.  I would like to better identify external access from access by students in my class, but at present I can only tell that by when access occurs.  I do wish the Campus would consider the OER function more seriously, rather than only be concerned about Coursera, but I suppose I'm a voice in the wilderness on this.  C'est la vie.