Defaults are bad « Lisa's (Online) Teaching Blog - 1 views
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My class is organized like a syllabus. I need a button for Unit 1, a button for Unit 2. Every time we do a workshop where one of our faculty demonstrates how we’ve adjusted an LMS to make it look like a syllabus, we see light bulbs go on all over the room. We have, over the years, called these workshops things like “Making Blackboard Work for You”, “Redesigning Blackboard”, and “The Interactive Syllabus”. Yesterday our presenters Andrea Petri and Laura Paciorek gave a workshop called “A New Wardrobe for Blackboard: Technical Basics of Instructional Design”. Andrea showed us his class, organized into units, with each unit a page full of links, all in one place for that unit. We’ve got tutorials, like this one on creating an interactive syllabus in Blackboard by Pilar Hernández . We have a handout showing a logical chapter-based LMS menu. Laura Paciorek made a screencast on how to change the Blackboard menu .
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Something for the ETs and Jason to read and react to. -
Interesting article! I think one reason why many teachers keep on sticking to the defaults is because _precisely_ BB can be so flexible and do so many things, and there's a lot of templates available. This panoply of choices leads to decision fatigue on the teachers' part: "Which features should I use for presenting to my students? how can I package and so on... arrrrh I'll just stick with the defaults and customize another day." (Can read more about decision fatigue at http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/magazine/do-you-suffer-from-decision-fatigue.html) So, I think our training strategies would have to recognize and take into account this human tendency to choose the easy defaults, especially when mentally tired. -
Defaults are bad? hmmm... My son started using the kiddy skate scooter about 4 mths ago and he does it like a pro now. When I bought the scooter, it came with 'default settings', i.e. all fixed up and ready to use. He had a go at it and we adjusted the height and widen the handles along the way. He grew more confident and I removed the trainer wheels. I cannot imagine when the scooter came without any 'default settings', i.e. 4 wheels, 2 bars, rubber tubes, etc, I will be quite frustrated setting it up from scratch and my son will be climbing all over me. Defaults cannot be seen as something bad in my opinion. It gives new users or busy people something to start with, I personally appreciate that. When we design instructions, we provide foundations to get our learners started, building blocks or scaffolding their learning as they progress. A range of basic, intermediate or advanced instructional plans can also be presented later on. Essentially, what are the characteristics of our learners or the users of bb? What do you think they need? Demographics of our acad staffs for example are quite 'senior adult learners' (correct me if I am wrong). Do we think we want to present a blank bb page and tell them, 'hey, guess what? its all about customisation now, whatever you want, put it in.' No prize for guessing what their reactions will be. On the other hand, there maybe a group of people who do not want to conform to defaults but to change things or customise their experiences. Nothing wrong with that too. My point is, let's provide a range of options for users, we inform that there are default settings to get them started but there are also room for customisation for the adventurous. We want to be learner centric, hence customisation of experiences but we also do not want to leave anyone behind. That said, I am going to change all my default passwords and user ids of my mobile.... no wonder banks have been calling me to ask if I needed loans.
