4 ms·

Another student here with my two cents. Your course website looks very clear, easy to use, etc. (also, I like the approach you seem to be taking with the mater

by jkimmel 13y ago

Another student here with my two cents. Your course website looks very clear, easy to use, etc. (also, I like the approach you seem to be taking with the material, I learned from the same book and always thought the convergence test guesswork was silly) Part of my personal frustration with custom Professor sites, and that of other students I know, is simply that it's yet another site to keep track of. For all the failings of large LMS's, they are effective at centralizing coursework into a location a student can check daily. When a few professors have custom sites, it's easy to forget to check one Prof's site for updates, announcements, etc. Even just for syllabus info, I have more than once gone to my LMS and groaned when I realized that I had to look up the address for a custom site or dig through bookmarks. I once had a semester where every Prof used their own site, and I had to cycle through 5 bookmarks daily to keep track of everything. TL,DR: it's simply one more thing to keep track of, increasing the friction of information acquisition from a student's perspective.

saraid216 13y ago
> Part of my personal frustration with custom Professor sites, and that of other students I know, is simply that it's yet another site to keep track of. It's worth noticing that this is a symptom of a much larger trend in academia: professors tend to be naturally siloed and need to put in effort for presenting themselves and discovering others' work. Journals seem to have some positive effect, but Elsevier seems to negate a lot of that effect. Contrast this with something like the open source community, with its registries of projects and package managers and the current (long-lasting) trend towards platforms and APIs. I think what I'm describing is what SCORM is supposed to be, but I've never actually used it, and I suspect SCORM is the XML of it. The "Yes, it does the job, but ohgodclunkymassivehugepain, save us Douglas Crockford, you're our only hope."

by jkimmel 13y ago

saraid216 13y ago

> Part of my personal frustration with custom Professor sites, and that of other students I know, is simply that it's yet another site to keep track of. It's worth noticing that this is a symptom of a much larger trend in academia: professors tend to be naturally siloed and need to put in effort for presenting themselves and discovering others' work. Journals seem to have some positive effect, but Elsevier seems to negate a lot of that effect. Contrast this with something like the open source community, with its registries of projects and package managers and the current (long-lasting) trend towards platforms and APIs. I think what I'm describing is what SCORM is supposed to be, but I've never actually used it, and I suspect SCORM is the XML of it. The "Yes, it does the job, but ohgodclunkymassivehugepain, save us Douglas Crockford, you're our only hope."