The path of least resistance and least trouble is a mental rut already made. It requires troublesome work to undertake the alteration of old beliefs. – John Dewey
This week, I took a crash course in Blackboard 9.1. For those of you unfamiliar with this product, Blackboard is an online course development and communication tool rumored to have been created by Satan himself. Most of its competitors have perished in the wake of its steady advance towards world domination. Blackboard’s unique format now determines the pedagogical landscape for instructors and students, much the same way Power Point shapes (and cripples) the presentation universe.
Whether evil or handy, this tool is necessary for my job. Every year, our incoming doctoral students take a statistics assessment to determine their quantitative starting points. Design and delivery of the test (though, thankfully, not content), fall to me.
The program coordinator in my department joined me for the training. In the computer lab, we found a small collection of faculty members from our campus. Everyone, it seems, uses Blackboard now, even the professors who have had tenure since the signing of the Magna Carta.
The objectives of the training seemed simple enough. We were expected to learn the basics of getting started with the latest version of Blackboard. The poor instructor from the Department of Instructional Technology had no idea how complicated “simple” becomes when training graduate faculty.
“Now, we are going to upload a document.”
“All I want to do is post a syllabus!” The professor across from me had a bit of a volume control problem. “Can’t you just show me how to post a syllabus?”
“Yes, sir, that’s what we are doing. Now, go to ‘course content’. . . “
“To what?” He was just a decibel shy of shouting. “To course what?”
She walked around to his side of the room. “I’m sorry, I’m not sure what happened here. You’ll need to close your browser and open a new one.”
“Close my what?”
“Click the red X. That will close. . .”
“The what? Click the what?”
“Just click the red X, sir, on the top right corner of your screen, sir, please. . . “
“Just click the red X, sir, on the top right corner of your screen, sir, please. . . “
On and on this went, with almost every participant in the room. Ten faculty members needed constant guidance and reassurance. My co-worker and I bit our tongues through each agonizing stretch between tasks. Finally, I realized a course in the basics was not going to get me anywhere close to the level of skill necessary to design on online stats assessment. Instead of seething in poorly disguised frustration, I began exploring.
After discovering the FAQs and a few hidden drop-down menus in the control panel, I was on my way. I created two different tests along with several versions of syllabi and course descriptions. For a few head-scratching moments, I was stumped about making the quizzes live for my cohort of dummy students. I meandered through unfamiliar pages until I unlocked the right door. Meanwhile, my co-worker zipped through her own learning process, pausing every now and then to show me a trick she had picked up.
Twenty minutes before the scheduled end of the session, our dynamic duo was logging out and heading for the door. All around us, faculty members kvetched and interrupted and ran the instructor ragged.
“Why can’t I see it! I can’t see it!”
“You’ll have to turn the editing mode back on.”
“The what? The editing what?”
Learning anything new is a challenge, of course, but that room was filled with some of the brightest minds in their fields. One professor has published ten books. Another is an economist who advises the World Bank and USAID. Since landing this position at George Mason University, I have been in awe of the faculty and their high caliber research. Curiosity and investigative skill should lead the academic mind to explore any unknown subject with aplomb, shouldn’t it? On the contrary, these brilliant thinkers were out of their depth in an online training, needing someone to hold their hands and keep them afloat through what I considered a simple process.
“The what? The editing what?”
Learning anything new is a challenge, of course, but that room was filled with some of the brightest minds in their fields. One professor has published ten books. Another is an economist who advises the World Bank and USAID. Since landing this position at George Mason University, I have been in awe of the faculty and their high caliber research. Curiosity and investigative skill should lead the academic mind to explore any unknown subject with aplomb, shouldn’t it? On the contrary, these brilliant thinkers were out of their depth in an online training, needing someone to hold their hands and keep them afloat through what I considered a simple process.
Do we all become pigeonholed? Does our area of expertise so thoroughly define us that we forget our brains are always capable of adapting? Perhaps this is a generational dynamic, but that explanation is too limited. Many professors from across the age spectrum overcome much trickier changes in the academic terrain than a Blackboard upgrade. Outside the ivory tower, age does not correlate consistently with rigidity. My great-uncle decided in his 80s to communicate by email. He wanted to be in touch with far-off friends and family members. With limited mobility, electronic tools were his vehicle. If necessity is the mother of invention, perhaps hunger sires expansion.
It simply never occurred to me that I would not master Blackboard 9.1. I need to learn it to do my work well, and so I will learn it. Maybe the trick is to begin with full faith in the plasticity of the brain. This faith does not preclude toil and even a bit of pulse-popping anxiety about new endeavors. It does, however, set the mind on an inevitable course of expansion. When stagnation is the alternative, learning is the only real option.
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