Technology. Sometimes it's more trouble than it's worth.

The three schools in which I teach use Blackboard as a course management and delivery system.  I've been using Blackboard for nearly ten years, having been introduced to it when I first started teaching as an adjunct at UNH.  Over the years, Blackboard has evolved by adding more features and refining the ones already there.  Blackboard has been a boon to the distance learning world in that it allows students to access assignments, engage in discussion forums and real time chat, e-mail their fellow students without looking up individual addresses, access their grades, and upload assignments.  In addition, students can take tests and quizzes online and use a number of peripheral learning tools if made available by their schools and their professors. 

Blackboard is also a useful tool for use in traditional classes, since it allows the class to continue if the professor is ill or the schools closes for snow, helps to make the campus greener by allowing students to receive assignment handouts and deliver assignments without the use of paper or printer, and allows for the speedy delivery of announcements.  All this is wonderful but....

It doesn't alwasy work.  As the technology increases, so do the problems.  Blackboard tech support has told us that it is not work with Firefox, and, indeed, last year that was the problem.  Students uploading with Firefox would get error messages that told them to upload a valid file, which is what they were trying to do.  Students attempting to take quizzes would have half the page blanked out, or they would get kicked out altogether.  This year, students using Internet Explorer are getting the same message.  They can't seem to find a browser that works with Blackboard. 

IT staff at the schools is telling us that students should change docx files to doc files.  Why?  No one had a problem with docx file last year?  Now we are told that students are trying to upload documents with long and complex names, but somehow assign1.docx doesn't seem long or complex to me, and I don't see any unsual characters there either. 

The end result is that instead of uploading assignments to the assignment section, students are dumping everything into digital dropbox.  Now for the uninitiated, let me explain.  Uploading directly through the assignment area places the student's document right into the grade center.  Open.  Read. Grade. Write comments.  Done.  One stop and all the material is there until the end of the course.  Digital dropbox is one big dumping ground.  Files are uploaded and listed, and often you have to open each file to find the right one from the right student.  If you keep the files through the semester, the list just grows longer and longer, and if you want to erase them, you must erase them one by one.  In short, it's an archaic, slow, pain-in-the-rear way of handling documents, and one that is rumored to be deleted in future versions of Blackboard. 

In addition, if you teach multiple sections of the same class, you must upload your material to each section separately.  So what time am I saving?  Distance learning courses are getting to be a major time hog, and the frustration that comes from a long list of students complaining that their files won't load, and they don't want to be penalized is time consuming, frustrating, and defeating of the entire purpose:  to deliver quality educational materials quickly and efficiently.  

So my question is this?  Why can't a software system used by schools and colleges all over the country figure out how to co-exist with the various popular browsers and accept student documents with ease?  Maybe we should just all go back to collecting papers.