My girlfriend started taking a Masters in a college this year. In her course the faculty have shown some disorganization and computer illiteracy since day one but the latest one…completely killed me.
Besides their personal college e-mail, they wanted a platform to make announcements for all the course (20 students). I can think of a thousand ways to do this. Hell, even a Facebook group would be better. But no…
They have an e-mail address (like [email protected]) where all the info is sent and EVERYBODY has the password to enter the e-mail and check the inbox.
That is it. I have no words. I think this is the most idiotic and dumb thing I’ve ever seen in IT.
my wife is a university senior lecturer — it’s likely they already have a system that can do this, that they have access to, works, and is non-technical; all they need to do is ask where it is.
I went back to university last year and exactly this. They have Microsoft subscription with all the bells and whistles, classroom, work material, homework, etc.
edit: I guess I just ADHDed in the middle of writing this comment. it was supposed to continue:
… zoom and all its options, plus a custom classroom web app that replicates some of Microsoft’s stuff and all professors use WhatsApp for everything, and email only for delivering finals papers.
I think it was blackboard that was used when I went to a further education college years ago. It supported announcements on it. I would imagine a university having similarly software as one of the reasons for blackboard was so we uploaded our assignments to it.
I don’t know if it’s any better than it used to be, but Blackboard was pretty universally loathed by the faculty when I was in college.
Dude I hated it as a student too. The only benefit it provided was a one time get out of jail free card per class. Intentionally corrupt a word doc and upload it. You just bought yourself at least a day to continue finishing your paper.
You have to admit, it’s still better than having a singular email address that everyone has the login to.
It’s like someone explained the idea of a mailing list but they didn’t quite get it.
Plot twist: the MA program is in Ethics and Morality and they’re in the middle of a live experiment.
A very poor attempt at a mail-list. I wonder when someone’s going to change the password.
Or delete all messages and trash.
Seems like it might be time to change the password on that email address. You know, for security reasons. 🤔
“Hey all, I wanted to say that class is cancelled today b/c of severe weather - PLEASE do not try to come in, it really is quite dangerous outside!”
Got it, message received, [delete message]. Cleaned out my inbox today, guess I can
gostay home! :-PConnect via POP, Instant fun
Why? Can you please explain the joke to me?
Many emails clients automatically delete the messages on the email server once they locally download them.
The POP-Protocol is designed to delete all new Mails on the Server after connecting
Simple. Elegant. Perfect.
10/10
@college.duh
chefs kiss
Moodle is free and open source and exactly for this (along with hosting course material as well).
Just because I like to see the world burn I would clear the inbox/sent folders each time a email is received.
Maybe start to draft emails with nonsense in them, such as shopping lists of items that don’t make sense together. A list of all the best bathrooms on campus. List of students in class based on height.
Would not hurt to subscribe the email address to a bunch of junk/spam/marketing sites.
Nah, I’d sign up for cat memes or something, then set up filtering rules to delete everything except for the cat memes. If they’re dumb enough to think the shared inbox is a good solution, they might not know about filters.
Sir this is a wendy’s
I’ll have a Loaded Nacho Triple Cheeseburger with extra chili on top. Actually make it two of those. Oh and a small chocolate frosty.
(small cause I’m on a diet)
Well, can’t say I’m surprised. I had something like that in pretty much every school I was in, just that ours were actually Gmail accounts. For non-technical folks it’s an easy and obvious solution. And to be honest, it works…
It “works” if everybody is well behaved and you don’t care about niceties like seeing which messages have been read.
lol yea I’m changing that password first chance I get just for shits and giggles
Would expect nothing less from an MA program.
