BlackBoard is the worst invention ever made. I am a student that uses it if that helps. It is the most ass backwards thing in one class I have to click through 5 or 10 different things just to get to the assignment. I don’t have time for that. Then it opens up in 6 differnt windows. 1 is suffectent. It dosent talk to firefox. Come on get with the program most people use firefox ta da! And the assy thing will lock you out of asignments if u hit the wrong button by mistake. I say stick to e-mail and standard calss.

You know – you are right. The main benefits are:

– Students already know how to use it
– Roughly 90% of the professors in the department use it (and I’m guessing the ratio might be similar for the whole school).

This provides a centralized point for posting class related announcements, lecture notes and assignments. They will get your announcements, while they are checking information for their other classes.

Making them visit additional websites is like pulling teeth. If I taught a high level class I’d definitely consider a blog and more personal approach as people who take these classes are generally interested in the subject. But 100 level, required courses mean that you generally get a lot of kids who just want a passing grade, and will go to great lengths to to as little work for the class as possible.

Love/hate relationship? What the hell is there to love about it, other than the workout your lungs get from screaming at it? Things work better by plain old email for sending out the notices and documents. 15 minutes invested at the beginning of the semester in entering email addresses into Outlook, and I’m done. Anyone wants their grades early, they email me and I reply. You don’t need it for Turnitin.com, either. Want a dialogue with your students? Start a blog. Kick the stupid evil scumbag malware off your computer and out of your life.

If you had Netflix, you’d be able to watch the first 2 seasons instantly on your computer. I love these anti-spam blocking words that I have to type to comment on your page.

My favorite one of all time was ‘foobar.’

No problem. If you have any questions let me know.

The Office is one of those shows that I keep hearing about that I always plan to watch but never actually do. :)

I really enjoy Blackboard for it’s inconvenience, lack of real security, and it’s ability to pick and choose which emails it will send or not.

OT, but here is a link to the scene of The Office I was telling you about:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=h-f3q6C-8OE

Thanks for helping me out today.

@Zewrestler – oh man, you’d thing that there would be other alternatives out there. Sigh…

@varci – LOL, this is the same thing that Dr. Robila told me – you can always make someone drop a class. ;)

Just kick out one of your students. Not only will you then get the optimal number of 25, but you’ll also gain a rep for being a hardarse who’s not to be messed with. :p

This is true, but I still have to work with it at grad school.

Yeah.. But I get to deal with all this fun stuff once again. :P Sigh…