Several other people in the department have started using WebAssign to handle homework assignments in the introductory class, because it provides a way to assign and grade daily homework without forcing the faculty member to do a ton of grading (the college has a policy against student graders). WebAssign takes textbook problems, randomizes the numbers slightly so each student sees something different, and automatically grades the answers as students type them in on the web.
I’m a little hesitant to use it (I’m teaching the class in question next term), for two reasons: one is that there’s some extra cost to the students (they need to pay something like $15 to register for the system), but the main reason is that I’ve been using Blackboard for a while now.
Don’t get me wrong– Blackboard has some nice features, otherwise I wouldn’t continue using it. I like the fact that it password-protects my notes and handouts without my having to deal with ITS. I like the fact that it automatically generates course rosters and email lists, so I don’t have to worry about whether a given student ever looks at their default campus email accounts, or only reads their mail at “RoxxorGod8675309@hotmail.com”.
But the day-to-day use of Blackboard is just a miserable grind, due to all the excess clicking they require for no good reason.
For example, if I want to add a PDF of my lecture notes to a folder, I go to the Control Panel for the class, then the relevant content area, then the folder in question, and click “Add Item.” This gives me a screen where I can upload a file and give it a name and some explanatory text. Then I click “Submit.”
After submitting, Blackboard goes to an otherwise blank screen containing a note saying that the item was successfully added. I have to click “OK” (the only option on the screen) to get back to the folder where I added the item.
It’s like this for everything. Every individual action gets its own confirmation page, every time. Some actions get an extra special dialog box along the way– if I want to change the file associated with a specific item, for example, I click through to a screen that’s exactly like the “Add Item” screen, and click “Remove” next to a particular file. Which brings up a dialog box saying “This action is permanent and cannot be undone,” which I have to approve before it sends me to the stupid confirmation page again. I have to “OK” the confirmation and then click back to the Item page to add the new file.
This is especially annoying at the moment, because the system is apparently overloaded, and every fifth click or so something times out. Which means I get to reload the page again, in order to see the stupid confirmation page again.
These aren’t major gripes, by any stretch, but they pile up. Every action on Blackboard takes half again as long as it should, thanks to all the waiting for confirmation pages and extra mouse clicks required to do anything. Irritation at the system just builds up, until I stop updating the site as frequently as I ought to, just because each new confirmation screen makes me want to punch my monitor.
A colleague was showing me WebAssign yesterday, and while the system has some nice features, it also looks like it has Blackboard’s two-clicks-for-every-action problem. Actually, it might be slightly worse, because it seems to spawn new browser windows every time you click on a link.
The idea of closing five extra tabs every time I need to do something just doesn’t make me fired up to use WebAssign. Put that together with the extra cost to students, and I start to wonder whether it’s really worth the bother.