Faculty Poll on Factors Affecting Student Success
Please help us focus our efforts for continual improvement of our online teaching and learning:
3 CommentsThe “EDUbrowser” – a vision
I have been thinking about this for several years now but some recent events have brought this to the forefront. The “camel meet straw” event was when our most recent course management upgrade was installed, it was extremely buggy with Internet Explorer 8, which had been installed on campus as a standard browser. Of course the CMS vendor was clear in their listing of supported browsers (and IE8 was not on that list). Still, we had to deal with MANY calls and frustrated users because they were trying to use their updated browser in our updated system and things just were not happy.
I see two major problems here:
- it is time-consuming and expensive to continually develop a product and test it against ALL browser flavors available now so the supported browser list stays “dated” for longer than end users want or need
- it is impossible to prevent end users from upgrading to the latest and greatest browser, (especially when Microsoft Software Update does the upgrade for the user)
So, I present the concept of the EDUbrowser.
It really is pretty simple. Take a browser engine like WebKit or Gecko and build your own browser around it. Using a plugin architecture (I know Gecko supports that – don’t know about WebKit), you can add features like HTML editing (like Xinha) , annotations (ala Scrapbook or Zotero), social networking options such as Flock has done and, perhaps, work with third party companies like Respondus to create optional secure browser features for online testing/quizzes much like Respondus LockDown Browser but within the EDUbrowser rather than using a totally separate product.
Add in some video editing capabilities (like Kaltura) and Audio Recording (such as the JetPack audio option from Mozilla labs) and student and faculty generated content and media becomes even easier.
And, of course, you can build a toolbar that “brands” your school so you can also provide access to support links, school event information and more. Something like Conduit would do the trick
Plus, if the LMS vendors take the EDUbrowser and test it against their products, then it can be come the ONLY supported browser greatly simplifying their QA testing and verification as well as the local school’s own technical support.
Thus, you simply tell faculty and students that they must use the EDUbrowser. Our experience with the RLDB has been that students are fine with downloading and installing something they need for class, so I don’t think asking them to use this particular browser will be an issue (except for those who are attending class at work and cannot install something on their computers there – I can see that being an issue).
What else does it take to get the EDUbrowser out in the wild? What else would you add to it?
Photo remixed from:
cc licensed flickr photo shared by kate e. did
Major Electrical Work on Campus – October 17-19, 2009
A major upgrade to the College electrical system is scheduled for Fall Break. Many computer services will be down from Saturday, October 17th at 5:00 p.m. through Tuesday, October 20th at midnight. If the contractor completes the project ahead of schedule, services may be available earlier in the day on Tuesday, October 20th . Please review the information below concerning the availability of computer services at each campus during this upgrade.
A. AVAILABLE
· Active Directory (login to desktop but some icons may not work) Note: Due to Login scripts trying to map drives to servers that are down, initial login will be slow)
· internet service
· wireless service
· telephones local and long distance
· E911
· D2L access (Note: login to D2L from the homepage as myPellissippi will be down)
· official College website (pstcc15)
B. UNAVAVAILABLE
· College email, including webmail
· Banner services
· Network drives (H drives, shared, etc.) Note: If you need to work on something that is located on your H drive during fall break, please move a copy to your C drive prior to the system going down.
· Voicemail
· Auto dialer
· Rightfax
· myPellissippi
· Other – any other data services not listed explicitly as “available” will be down
For your convenience, we will provide the project status on Pellissippi’s homepage during Fall Break.
If you have questions, please contact the Information Technology Support Center by sending e-mail to HELPDESK or by calling 694-6537.
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