By way of preface, this post is sort of a semantical rant on the state of online learning (or e-learning). I have the unique perspective of working on both ends of the spectrum: having taken courses that are partially (or fully) online to helping faculty and staff in the ASU College of Public Programs develop online learning courses. What’s more, I work with Dr. Colleen Carmean, who knows a thing or two about e-learning best practices.
What really inspired me to write this post was the discovery that the assessments (read: quiz) feature of Blackboard (ASU’s course management system) is incompatible with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8. And then I got to thinking about the big questions of the Internet: the whys and the hows. Over the summer, I was enrolled in a non-ASU online course (the institution shall remain nameless for its sake) that required the use of Internet Explorer and whose accompanying e-textbook was solely for Windows environments.
I understand that I’m in the minority of home computer users: I solely run Ubuntu (a Debian-based Linux distribution) on my machines. A few programs I use still require Windows, and so I have a virtualized installation of Windows XP on two of my machines that I can call up whenever I need (but if and only if they don’t work in WINE). But in the end, I’d like not to use Windows or have my computer masquerade around as Windows. If the world is moving more toward the Internet, shared knowledge, and cloud computing, then shouldn’t the operating system be irrelevant?
But here’s the big question: Isn’t the point of the Internet (let alone distributed learning and shared knowledge) that it transcends operating systems and Internet browsers? Isn’t that why we have standards like HTML (hypertext markup language)?
Forget Internet Explorer and its slow adoption of Internet standards. Forget the fact that some instructors and institutions mandate certain computing requirements for their courses. As I see it, if an instructor is going to have an online course or if an institution is going to mandate an online course management system, then it shouldn’t just support 90% of computers (read: those that use Windows). It shouldn’t just support the big two operating systems (read: Windows or Macintosh). It should support the entire realm of computing, so the Windows-based instructor can talk to their Ubuntu-based student who can in turn talk to others in class who run Macintosh or Windows.
At the macro level, the Internet, it seems, is a standard. All browsers should support 100% of that standard. Enabling “compatibility modes” in an Internet browser seems silly and stupid, as IE8 users in Blackboard must do.
Come on, people. Goodness gracious.
-Edward Jensen
