13 responses to “i know you can do better than this.”

1. I’m guessing here, but Blackboard is famous for their distance learning software. Presuambly, they’re marketing their offline versions as “Blackboard Stand-alone” … again, I’m just guessing here.

   Other than the vague product description, it’s probably a good match: it looks like the CBT/e-learning supplement to the Strahler “Introducing Physical Geography” book. I can see why they’d try to sell you the supplement, now that it’s available.

2. I just happened to randomly come across this post.

   I also happen to be an online instructor who uses Blackboard. A lot of publishers offer Blackboard course cartridges for instructors so that they basically have pre-fab lecture notes, quizzes and assignments.

   This is doo though, since the idea of having a paperback stand-alone seems to defeat the purpose of having a course on Blackboard in the first place..

3. doo = odd

4. My question is, how long ago did you *buy* the Strahler book? Didn’t you already own it when we met back in 2003? I remember seeing it on your shelf and commenting I had several textbooks from University by the Strahlers (yay first and second year courses).

5. What’s odd is that I didn’t buy the book from them, I just put it in as “I already own this” at some point. But even still — it’s July, and it’s a textbook, and I didn’t buy it in the last month or two.

6. “This is doo” got the message across! :)

7. 1994 or 1997! And not even from Amazon!

8. lol!

   Well come to think of i, that’s pretty much how I feel about Bb.

9. “… the idea of having a paperback stand-alone seems to defeat the purpose of having a course on Blackboard …”

   Except when you’re offline, without a computer? Then, a dead treeware version of the Blackboard courseware in paperback sounds really … convenient.

   I know, I know … life without net connectivity? Perish the thought!

10. No, but the Blackboard supplement was apparently just released in July 2006, which would explain why they would let you know about it, since you told them you own the corresponding textbook.

    At least it’s a relevant suggestion, even if not a timely one for you. I love it when I get recommendations that make no sense to me at all.

11. Take the computer/online component away and it’s no longer an online course, is it? And as such, the dead treeware version of the courseware in paperback is, well, a textbook.

    Mind you, I do have the occasional student email me to say that they’ve signed up for my online course but don’t have a computer – can I please accomodate this and not ask them to do any computer-based work?

12. Take the computer/online component away and it’s no longer an online course, is it? And as such, the dead treeware version of the courseware in paperback is, well, a textbook.

    Mind you, I do have the occasional student email me to say that they’ve signed up for my online course but don’t have a computer – can I please accomodate this and not ask them to do any computer-based work?

13. That seems to be the consensus. Candice had to use Blackboard when she was at Algonquin and it didn’t seem like a pleasant experience.

    When I was working at Concordia we were using WebCT. All I remember of it is having to reverse-engineer their “proprietary backup format” which was a ZIP file with enough bytes modified to make Winzip and pkzip barf on the file, but I know the maintainers, faculty and students weren’t exactly thrilled.

    I think I was probably one of the last classes at McGill to not have to use online courseware, although for the short time I was doing CS there was a lot of online activity, just not all in one piece of administration-mandated software.