I Learn in Blackboard and WebCT

Both Stephanie Coopman's Article and the Erna Kotkamp article provided ample criticism on the format and functionality of WebCT and other Learning Management Systems. And personally, they were pretty painful to read. But I get the point. Truly.

These will be called LMS's from now on because I'm not typing that out again.
Ahem. Problem number one: we're calling this an LMS. These LMS's are websites that function as on line depositories, places where instructors may dump their syllabi and bully students into taking online quizzes. LMS's, WebCT, Blackboard, iLearn and whateverLearn are places where instructors watch the tally counts on the web page increase and convince themselves learning is taking place. Or do they? Or they are places in which in class discussions become diverted to these LMS forums, thereby becoming a forced thing in which all students must take part in, or else suffer a bad grade for the semester. I've seen it happen.
In my experience, these LMS's have always been fairly insufferable. I have seen these e-learning environments fail many times. For example: A professor brought to my attention that I must post at least three replies to three separate threads in four different forums, but I am required to bring up at least one of these topics in the following class period. In the midst of all of these tree branches of commentarypostydiscussiony forums, I am also simultaneously supposed to be thinking about Beowulf, somehow. I am too busy clicking, scrolling, reading too many posts and timing out of my sessions to comprehend anything about 8th century literature. Really.

I digress.

I make this sound like the instructor responsible for such mayhem in the classroom is a monster or something. He or she is in fact not a monster, nor harbouring any sort of ill will toward students and technology. These LMS's are a two way street. How well Blackboard or any other sort of online LMS succeeds, depends on the intent of the instructor: where does the instructor want the class to go?
More importantly, it also depends on the willingness of the students to throw themselves into new, uncertain and disturbing situations. They don't always want to do that. Thus are the hazards of using new form of technology. Kotkamp paraphrases John Dewey in this point by stating, "A certain amount of insecurity and chaos is crucial for an effective learning process." And I agree. This should be the case in any classroom, using technology or not. The hybrid class of physical partipication in the classroom combined with online partipication outside of the classroom is a very delicate balance to maintain. The class must be structured and organized in a way that makes the content through these LMS's relevant and meaningful. Clearly as expressed far more eloquently and academically than I will ever be able to muster, Coopman and Kotkamp agree that the current use of LMS's need to be revamped. The human should never be or become an object, the OOP the OOA or an OOmpa LOOmpa.
Part of the problem with these LMS's, are the too clearly defined roles of Instructor and Student. It literally is instructor versus student. And it shouldn't be like this. Coopman suggests branching out into something that allows students to more fully express themselves and their personality, by using a blog in conjunction with in-class interaction. This bliggity blog allows students to have their voice heard, that might sometimes be silenced in the classroom. Which it does. I mean why would I ever say BLIGGITY BLOG in the classroom. I mean, I might, but it isn't likely. Case in point. And after the student initially gets over the fact that everybody in the class will be reading the thing, the blog becomes something that is just a different form of communicating an idea.
Using the concept of the blog with a class is loads better than the Blackboard or Ilearn format. The discussions and forums, and posts and quizzes created in Blackboard either feel like a chore, or they become these fake and forced discussions that students are required to engage in. They are phony ways of interacting with a topic.

Here's an idea for the digital humanities:

Write about things you are interested in, outside of class. Okay...what do I mean by that? Take things you have written for classes, and use them to create a online website/journal/e-newspaper/community, catered to the specific department (humanities, foreign language, comparative literature, film, ect) that features articles, clips, writings, poetry, whatever written for students and maintained by students. That sentence was entirely too long. These documents can come from class papers, and can be posted to the site for criticism, and feedback, or anything else of note. Ok so that's our campus newspaper. No, it will be specifc for each department. So take the humanities: Certain themes could be introduced to inspire writings. Moreover, these students that partipicate in the creation of and maintence of the site, (but also people who contribute to the site) can have their own blogs to which people who visit the website can access more writings from a particular author. These writings do not all have to be so serious, either. They can be casual, or they can be entirely academic. The point being, is that there is a way for the humanities department to connect to each other, and collectively bring together a communities ideas.
Granted, this is all entirely too optimistic and idealistic. Even I know that, and I'm not known for being an optimist about anything. But it's a idea that feasibly could work. With effort.