TESC Rant (new website, new email, more frustration)

[jam123]

First, I have a BA from TESC, I like the school and I think their programs are very good. It just drives me crazy that their customer service is so terrible. I have been a software engineer for 15 years and their website is among the most terrible I have seen. It's always been terrible. Their IT decision making is terrible.

I went to the website today for the first time in many months. It is so slow. You click on something and the "Loading" circle displays for 30 seconds. You click on something else and their is your friend the "Loading" circle. I tried to update my phone number but I get an error that I must pick a phone type (home, work, cell I guess) from a dropdown list that is empty.

I also noticed I had three unread messages waiting for me. I click on the link and it takes me to a Google screen wanting to to accept their terms of service and privacy policy. Why would I agree to let Google share my information with third parties and give them rights to my content? How many of you have ever read Google's terms of service?

This is just one paragraph of their terms:
"When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services [gmail, docs, youtube, etc.] , you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works, communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content."

I planned to get a 2nd bachelors and had some DSST and CLEP exams sent to TESC 3-4 months ago. So I logged in for the first time today and they are still not on my evaluation. This used to only take 2 months for non-enrolled students. Now its been 3.5 months and still not processed.

[UptonSinclair]

It amazes me that schools with a strong online presence don't invest more in technology. It blows my mind when I see an online school outsource their email services. Worse yet is schools that charge a premium because they have to pay for blackboard or Desire2Learn.

Combine outsourcing IT with using publisher test banks and it makes one question why we even need colleges.

[scorched]

I will only jump in because in case you have never seen what blackboard cost, then I think it might shock you. And I know all of us are looking for bargains, but technology isn't cheap.
Having consulted many universities that use BB, the average yearly cost including hw, sw, admin, maintenance, etc. is over $500K.
And the major ones are paying in excess of $1M a year. So take the number of students taking online classes and divide that up, it will show you why they charge technology fees.

Sure BB will offer some really small versions for under 50K, and offer "Cloud" hosted versions, but the licenses average to the tune of close to half of that 500k around 250K.
The D2L and Moodle are significantly lower cost from the SW perspective, but still require people to run and the hw it runs on, and even in moodles case it is suggested to have a support contract.

My sister is a prof, and is constantly complaining about the costs of the online learning suites her college has to buy.

And while I intend to take some course from SL because its cheap, I would rather pay a university for content they created versus SL simply taking mcgraw hills content and re-selling it.

[UptonSinclair]

Blackboard is expensive because college's are making spending decisions for other people. If they were unable to recoup the money through technology fees, they would be far more likely to hire a couple of $75,000 a year technicians to run a Moodle server. Our local CC charges $100 more per credit for online courses. Hell, most colleges won't even run their own Email servers. My CC in California managed to run its own Moodle servers quite well back in the mid 2000's. When you can get professors for pennies, I guess it really offends administrators to pay real wages.

Good luck finding courses created by a university. What I frequently find is courses built by publishers being proctored by underpaid adjuncts.

[scorched]

I will agree to disagree.
Blackboard is expensive because blackboard is expensive. Very few organizations understand opensource software, nor have the personnel skilled enough to manage it.
BB is the Oracle of the education world, very expensive because it had more features than the competition.

[OST]

I went to the website today for the first time in many months. It is so slow. You click on something and the "Loading" circle displays for 30 seconds. You click on something else and their is your friend the "Loading" circle. I tried to update my phone number but I get an error that I must pick a phone type (home, work, cell I guess) from a dropdown list that is empty.

It's been doing that since yesterday for me, and it's even happening today on the myEdison website.

I also tried logging in to the Web Advisor website today and I'm repeatedly getting the "Unable to access the registry database for the request." error. Hopefully this is just a temporary problem and will be fixed soon.

I also noticed I had three unread messages waiting for me. I click on the link and it takes me to a Google screen wanting to to accept their terms of service and privacy policy. Why would I agree to let Google share my information with third parties and give them rights to my content? How many of you have ever read Google's terms of service?

TESC uses Google's mail for student e-mails. The "My Unread Messages" section is convenient because it shows how many unread messages you have in your student e-mail without needing to directly go to Google's website. It's not like Google will be publishing all your e-mails you're sending through your Student Gmail account, I think you're reading too much into the terms of services.

[OST]

My biggest pet peeve about TESC's Online Student Services website is “The maximum number of cookie values has been reached” error whenever I try to open up a page in a new tab. :mad:

[jam123]

It's not like Google will be publishing all your e-mails you're sending through your Student Gmail account, I think you're reading too much into the terms of services.

If Google is not providing/publishing people's emails to third parties then why does Google's terms of service state that they are doing exactly that?

If a person or business puts in writing that they are doing something then I have to believe that they are doing it.

[jam123]

My original post wasn't commenting on Blackboard. I was talking about the student portal website. I like Blackboard. It may be expensive, but online classes still have to be more profitable for schools then in person classes.

[UptonSinclair]

The Blackboard point was supposed to be an example of the lack of IT knowledge retained in higher education. Unfortunately it derailed the conversation a bit: my apologies.