The Online Learning Suite, and hack *sigh*

[danieleWrites]

Consider this a massive whine aimed at a bunch of people who totally get it.

 

I've used Canvas and Angel as a teacher (old Blackboard, Tegrity, and Angel as a student), and I'm going to be using new Blackboard at my new school, as a student and a teacher. Yeah, they are the same Blackboard, but it's kind of like upgrading from Windows 3.1 to Windows 7, that's how long ago I used old Blackboard.

 

I like to use the OLS to give quizzes, because I use quizzes (like everyone else) to hold students accountable for the reading. I hate taking up 10 minutes of class time to give a quiz that I later have to grade, so I have the quiz online, due right before class, and while I still have to grade it (I give short answer rather than multiple guess), I get the benefit of being able to read it, always having the name on the quiz, and never having to collect and then pass the quizzes back out after grading. Plus: accountability and I can make it pedagogically worthwhile because they have time to answer the questions. So, new to Blackboard, I go a-hunting for info on how Blackboard does quiz/exams, or if that's even possible. I open up google (who doesn't these days?) and type in blackboard quiz. Google suggests "blackboard quiz hack".

 

Apparently, there is thriving community of coders that know how to work around various OLSes that like to talk about hacking these OLSes online. There is also a huge market for non-coding, failing students (some consider a B a fail) looking for coders to beg and bribe into helping them hack the OLS so they can change their grades. I am not only sad for the state of ethics in our universities, I'm irritated because I'm going to keep a paper grade book.

 

If these students would put half the effort into doing the assigned work as they do into cheating, they would have good grades.

[rising_star]

I use the online thing for grading and don't keep a paper grade book. Instead, I record all grades in a spreadsheet on my computer then upload that to the OLS (in my case Desire2Learn). So, a student could change their grade but, I'd be changing it back each time I upload the spreadsheet since it imports all the columns that I've inputted data into. TBH, I'd never heard of students trying to hack the OLS to change their grade. That seems beyond desperate to me.