The Rocket

Issue date: 9/14/07 Section: Opinion

In our trifecta of SRU Internet evil, we have the lovely Rock Talk, SRU's main Web site and Master Schedule, and Blackboard.

Meant to help students and professors by providing an online classroom, Blackboard's layout is straight out of Windows 95. It's hard to navigate, and it's not very user-friendly.

But what's even scarier than the interface is the way your every movement is being tracked.

On almost any Web site you visit, your presence is being recorded. Your Internet Protocol address is logged, which can give the webmaster an idea of where you live, who your internet provider is, the time you came to the Web site and how long you stayed.

However, on Blackboard, professors can access more than just your IP address and your location in the world.

They know you by name. They know "John Smith" visited the "Course Documents" folder at 5:54 p.m. on Monday, Sept. 10, 2007, clicked on the "Course Syllabus" link twice, and stayed for a total of five minutes.

The funny thing is, most students don't know they're being tracked.

The fact that their interaction with the Blackboard site could be accessed at any time by the professor doesn't cross their minds.

Sure, other Web sites have a lot of information about us, too, but those webmasters don't know us personally, they don't get to see that I was checking out the class roster link at 4:34 a.m. on Sunday and wonder, the next day in class, what I was doing with that information.

They don't have the capacity to make personal judgments about me because they don't know who I am and don't even know me by name.

To even begin to find out about Blackboard itself, you have to dig. I had to go search around at least four Web pages to get to a student handbook about Blackboard.

The handbook has nothing about the "tracking" of students, nor does it have information about the logging of their actions on the Blackboard Web site.

However, when you click on the instructor manual, it has lots and lots about the subject.

I find this curious - it's not as if anyone is trying particularly hard to hide it from students, but the fact that they are being monitored on the site isn't exactly in plain view.

After having so many classes that used Blackboard, a person would think that at least one of my professors would have mentioned it to us, or maybe that the university's Web site would have a link to a privacy statement regarding their tracking abilities.

To not have it out in the open is shady at best.

Personally, after learning about the "Big Brother" aspect of Blackboard, I've stopped using it as often as I used to.

I don't like the idea that my professors can see my activity on the Web site, and I especially don't like their ability to "check up" on me to see if I am using Blackboard.

In the post-Virginia-Tech-shooting world, I feel like I am constantly being "checked up" on. It's as if everything we students do anymore is under scrutiny to see if we're absolute lunatics.

If I stop visiting Blackboard and start writing angry poetry in my room, it must mean that I'm planning to take my parking spot anger out on some hapless fool in Boozel.

So, with "Big Brother" on the Blackboard Web site, I've started to wonder if perhaps the University has some kind of "Student Watch List."

What's next, RFID tags embedded in our skin?

They're already on our cell phones.

Lisbeth Wells-Pratt is a freshman creative writing major and a regular contributor to The Rocket.

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