5 ms·
Not sure about the generalization to enterprise software in general, but the critique of people choosing blackboard is spot on. Before selecting a tool, profes
by __MatrixMan__ 7y ago
Not sure about the generalization to enterprise software in general, but the critique of people choosing blackboard is spot on.
Before selecting a tool, professors should always ask: "is this the tool that two recent graduates would choose without my intervention?". Because to use any other tool is to deprive your students of skills they'll likely need.
Also:
> Once profs and students put down the pitchforks, committees will go back to their checklists, and feature creep will resume.
The solution is simple, don't put away the pitchforks. Keep them out until the people choosing the software inform the people that make the budget that that money would be better spent elsewhere.
If the professors don't know what tools those are, spend the money you're saving by not forcing featureful garbage down people's throats on engaging the studentry until the answers are clear.
Like maybe create work-study programs where students who know how to run the kind of boring website the web was designed for are paid to assist teachers in this task.
- swiley 7y agoEvery popular computer OS except android has an ssh client now. Just give the students and professors shells and have them put the documents in shared folders.
- curryst 7y agoThis is kind of a manifestation of this agency problem, though. We, presumably the people that would write this theoretical software, have a vastly different background than the people who will use the software (general students, not just CS students). SSH is perfect for us; it's a well known and supported tool that's shared in countless other workflows. Can you imagine the struggles of an Art History student trying to submit a paper at 3am and getting a message back that host key verification failed? I suppose even before that, they would need to figure out navigation in SFTP. Or resort to a third-party GUI SFTP client; and the options that GUI will ask them for are probably bewildering. I can just hear them asking "What the fuck is a host/server? All they gave me is this stupid website, sftp-server.myuniversity.edu"
- swiley 7y agoIt’s common among chemistry students because of the incredibly expensive Unix software they use for calculating eg molecular orbitals. I’ve gone to their meetings and listened to them, they know little about computers and are taught to use ssh.
- mnw21cam 7y agoAndroid has a few of those too. Heck, there's an ssh server for Android.
- swiley 7y agoAndroid doesn’t include an ssh client in the distribution.