The Badger Herald: Opinion: Learn@UW unworthy of a learned man

Opinion

Learn@UW unworthy of a learned man

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By Patrick Johnson
Wednesday, October 22, 2008 12:00 a.m.

2 Vote 0 Votes

Try to imagine a time, probably like in elementary school, when all your grades were neatly kept on a spreadsheet in a nice red notebook. That notebook was the sole record of your scores. If you failed a test — or I guess since we’re talking elementary school, if you were caught fighting over a “Where’s Waldo?” book — all you needed was a distraction and a pencil eraser to change your grade (if you had the guts). This one red notebook was of dire importance, and a teacher always remembered to grab it before evacuating the classroom for a fire drill.

It’s almost nostalgic to think back to then. Everything was so simple. Or think of when professors used to just post grades on an 8.5”x11” sheet of paper outside a classroom for everyone to huddle around.

Call me a Luddite, but it seems like our school’s grade-reporting Learn@UW causes just about as many problems as it solves. Only this time, when a student can’t access something on it, it’s not the professor’s fault: it’s Learn@UW’s.

Almost oxymoronically titled and unnecessarily abbreviated with an “@” symbol, this virtual classroom of sorts has made accessing information fairly easy in some respects, but is otherwise too complicated.

In high school and even middle school, my classes were organized in a better manner. PowerSchool, as it was called, was updated promptly and comprehensively announced changes in grades, attendance, etc. Now I only have three out of my six classes that make use of the would-be wonderful online grade and announcement portal.

Some parts of Learn@UW are completely unnecessary, like the “profile” section. I can’t really imagine how this would be effective, unless a student had a certain penchant for sharing their personal life with their professors and random students, because this is basically what this section is for. There’s even a section to upload a profile picture to give professors an image to tie to their grades. Are there bonus points for better pictures? Maybe students judge a peer’s aptitude in taking notes on their pictures so they know whom to e-mail when they miss lecture.

The profile section essentially tries to emulate Facebook, and it’s almost creepy. As if we need another way for people to stalk us (especially professors). The profile section is pretty comprehensive in comparison to Facebook; it includes spaces to enter: your home address, your phone number, your hobbies, your favorite books, your favorite musical group and also includes wholesome sections like “Future Goals” and “Most Memorable Learning Experience.” The only thing it’s missing is picture tagging and Learn@UW chat.

Do people really care about their profile? For me, I know I want to sign off Learn@UW as soon as I log in.

On the surface, Learn@UW seems pretty organized. It’s not. There’s a horrible navigation structure to it, and it seems like every other link is a dead end to a blank page that a professor hasn’t cared to enter information in. Despite these dead ends, there’s this overwhelming pressure to check every nook and cranny of the site to make sure you are aware of every grade, deadline and news update a professor has to offer. If you don’t, you’ll be the kid in class who didn’t check it and didn’t know that there were articles to read in the “Library/Reserves” section and discussion posts to respond to in the “Discussion” section.

This discussion section is also worrisome because there really isn’t a whole lot of discussion happening. Everything is very contrived, and everyone just wants to impress the professor. Most of the time people post their response without reading anyone else’s. In this way, the discussion section is an artificial integration of technology into a class.

It would be nice if professors really used the calendar section or just deleted it from the page because oftentimes some assignments are up and others are not. Sometimes whole weeks are blank, despite there being two papers and a midterm that week. The blanks are just mirages to fuel my procrastination.

There are, of course, a lot of really great features to Learn@UW. It’s great that, if a professor chooses to have a class listed on the site, a student can access every assignment and see most of their grades and the curve for the grade with ease. The news section is really great because then my inbox isn’t filled with messages every time a professor decides to shift his or her office hours one half hour early because he or she has a dentist appointment. But it seems like the problems that exist are easily fixed.

The program would be infinitely more effective if all classes were mandated to use it and professors streamlined the information on the page they create because every time I sign on Learn@UW a piece of me dies. It would make students all the more likely to access the page and do better in their classes because right now, I would rather spend more time learning at UW and less time Learn@UW-ing.

2 Comments | Leave a comment

Anonymous | October 22, 2008 2:59 PM | Reply

Learn@UW-or more accurately “Desire2Learn”-is one of the foremost online courseware tools in existence. Just because UW profs can’t get their act together doesn’t mean the site sucks. It means UW profs need to get their act together.

Jeff Bohrer | October 27, 2008 3:19 PM | Reply

Great article, Mr. Johnson. As someone who spends most of my work hours focused on Learn@UW, I had to read and reply.

I was happy to hear that 3 of your 6 courses are using Learn@UW — on average that’s a big increase over just a year or two ago. Although some faculty have been using systems like Learn@UW for years, many are just beginning to give it a try.

Our team (among many others) works hard to promote Learn@UW’s use, train instructors, address bugs when possible, and communicate how to use it effectively. Obviously, at UW use is not (and likely could not) be mandated.

From an instructor’s perspective, some of the tools in Learn@UW can be challenging to learn. Integrating their use into the curriculum takes even more thought and time. However, there are many people on campus dedicated to helping instructors use these tools well.

You’ve given me at least one idea on something we might be able to change to help students see updates in Learn@UW more easily. Let me work on that.

We need more student input! Anyone can contact me directly at jbohrer@wisc.edu with their ideas.

cheers, Jeff Bohrer Team lead, Learn@UW-Madison DoIT Academic Technology