Blackboard and the Digital Divide
Let us talk about something that QUT students use every day. Well, let’s at least pretend that we use it every day.
Universities use Learning Management Systems (LMS) like Blackboard Learn as a way to appeal to us tech-savvy students who do not always have time to come into uni (mostly because we procrastinate by looking at dog memes all day).
Blackboard was implemented because there was an immense amount of pressure on Universities to adopt e-learning practices. This pressure existed because education was being transformed from being closed up lecture hall with students learning the same content in the same type of way to a more open, accessible and interactive method of education.
Along with this, Blackboard allowed for a collaborative way for students to educate themselves and enabled students with different lifestyles to learn at their own pace and time. Especially students who take a little extra time to learn content, this system is perfect for them.
Which is why universities like QUT implemented it too. However, here are two reasons why Blackboard is annoying to use:
- The interface is outdated:
A study that was conducted to analyse Blackboard’s efficiency stated that one of the main reasons why students and faculty were apprehensive about using it was because of its interface design. This design made it hard for students to use this platform easily.
Two reasons why the design is terrible — the interface is text-heavy and is often challenging to navigate through. Some elements of the website are also tricky to decode.
Especially submitting an assignment, it is usually different for each unit. From my personal experience, submitting assignments gives me so much anxiety! Is it submitted? Is it not? Will I graduate? — This anxiety has made me wake up in the middle of the night and check if I’ve received the submission receipt.
Website interfaces, at least in 2019, should be a lot easier to navigate through. One good example is The Newyorker. Although not tertiary education-related, the interface is easy to look at and cruise through.
- It crashes ALL THE TIME
You may be familiar with the ‘QUT Blackboard is unavailable’ phenomenon that occurs when you need to submit a last-minute assignment.
Although it has some drawbacks, Blackboard is still fantastic for students with different lifestyles, especially those who live in faraway places or work full-time. With a stable internet connection, you can access these resources anywhere. Moreover, you can use it to learn content when you want to and at your own pace.
However, without stable access to the internet, education can be inaccessible for many communities in Queensland.
Blackboard Learn is excellent for students who have different work schedules and live far away from uni. However, there are students, especially those living in regional areas that do not have equal access to a decent internet connection. Moreover, this issue is important because every time we critique blackboard and such LMS systems, we forget to talk about students who do not have access to these systems in the first place.
Queensland’s Digital Divide:
A digital divide is an uneven distribution in the access to, use of, or impact of information and communication technologies (ICT) between any number of distinct groups.
While you may have complained about how long your pirated music takes to download, even though you live in Red Hill, there are some communities with almost no access to the internet, especially for essential services like banking and education.
The Australian Digital Inclusion Index (ADII) Queensland shows that people in low-income households (40.7), older Australians (41.3), Indigenous Australians* (47.4), people with a disability (48.6), and people not in paid employment (49.2) are the ones who are almost always digitally excluded.
If you are from one of these communities, work full-time or do not have the resources to commute to university every day, LMS platforms like Blackboard may not work with your lifestyle.
Say that you do have internet access, but your data plan is low. Low data plans are one of the main contributing factors to the digital divide. Blackboard’s ‘clunky’ and outdated interface, which is prone to multiple crashes, can be especially detrimental if you have a smaller data plan.
Most job-specific skills required by employers need a level of digital literacy. However, without equal access to the internet, gaining this digital literacy is very difficult.
We can say that this system of education is excellent for students, despite the drawbacks. However, when we critique these systems, we assume that all students have the same access to the internet. We need to be aware of this issue. More importantly, Universities should be looking into having measures in place for students who are digitally excluded. Like maybe offering offline courses to students or giving individual students a little extra time to complete their assignments.
However, until then, we can only share memes about our despair and first world problems associated with e-learning.
