Blackboard's Digital Dropbox Interface
Blackboard is a very popular Learning Management System. I have to use it for most of my graduate courses and it’s really been nothing but a frenzied click-fest. Sections are buried deep and threads on the forums are impossible to directly link to.
This quarter my professor’s assignment delivery method of choice is Blackboard’s Digital Dropbox. It sounds pretty friendly and easy to use but c’mon this is Blackboard! Naturally, my professor never received my solution to the assignment and it was originally graded as a 0.
If you click on the image, you’ll see two buttons: Add File and Send File. Clearly this means that you Add the files and then send them off to where ever they’re meant to go… right?
Apparently it means that you Add files to your personal “dropbox” or Send files to the instructors. It’s not a 2-step process as it may seem. And why is it called a dropbox to begin with? I thought it meant that I could drop the files in and be done with it. Otherwise, isn’t it more like a Digital Queuebox or something else just as useless?
Blackboard, I loathe you.
I am so glad I don’t have to deal with any LMS’s anymore. We’ll unless you count lynda.com.
I also am lucky enough to get to use blackboard this semester. I found it to be confusing and unnecessarily overwhelming. There are so many sections and links that just contain repetitive content and nothing seems to be where you would think it is or function the way you would expect it to. I’m sure its also a school to school issue but i can’t imagine how the 40 yr old housewife taking an online course at community college would feel.
Hi Jason,
Check out Sakaiproject.org. Many universities are moving to open source products instead of using Blackboard. Now that I have been using Sakai since July 2008, I find it very user friendly even though the interface is still in a frameset. The CLE includes many Web2.0 tools for student learning.
Karen