Communication Features

If you click on the Communication link, you will come up with a list of eight additional features:

• Announcements
• Collaboration
• Discussion Board
• Elluminate Live
• Group Pages
• Messages
• Roster
• Send Email

The Announcements feature links to the same place that the Announcements link on the Vertical Navigation Bar links to. This double listing creates confusion - on link could be eliminated.

Figure 28 - Double Listing of Announcements

The next feature, Collaboration, is a little unclear - it appears to be a combination virtual classroom and chat (Figure 29).

Figure 29 - Collaboration

Both a virtual classroom and a chat are good ideas. Ideally, a virtual classroom would have all of the features of Second Life, and a chat would have all of the features of a chat such as Yahoo! Messenger.

The Discussion Board is another very nice idea. In practice, however, the discussion board in Blackboard works more like a like an old listserv (Figure 30). A more effective solution would be to use Bulletin Board technology (Figures 31a, 31b, and 31c).

Figure 30 - Current Look of Blackboard Discussion Board

Figure 31a - An Example of a Discussion Board Using Bulletin Board Technology

Figure 31b

Figure 31c

It is unclear what the functions of Elluminate Live and Group Pages are, so I will defer any review at this time.

The Messages, Roster, and Send Email features could all easily be combined into one feature. At this point in the development of technology, it is a bit embarrassing to describe something so basic as what should be included in an email program. However, the email program at UAA needs a lot of work.

One central issue is how the Blackboard email section interfaces with the current UAA email system. These connections need to be worked out.

In integrating the roster, the best method would probably be to have a feature that automatically adds other students as contacts and tags them with the specific class number.

The biggest problem with the email system is that there is often a delay of 2 or 3 days, or more from the time someone sends you and email to when you receive it.

Another major problem is the minimal amount of storage that UAA offers. Since you can buy an external hard drive with 1 TB of storage for around $200 from Amazon, it seems insane to limit email accounts to MBs. Additionally, the size of allowable attachments for email should be increased significantly