Category: Education

Tweaking the D2L v9 Saved Successfully alert

In my day job as an instructional technology support guy I hear (and make) the occasional complaint about the technologies we use at our institution. Lately we’ve been hearing a lot about the new “Saved Successfully” alert banner that appears in Desire2Learn (D2L) version 9.  Since it’s slowing people down (myself included), I thought it was worth putting together a user stylesheet to alter its display.

Note: this is a bit of a geeky hack.  It looks right on my screen but might not on yours. You’ve been warned!

Firefox or Chrome

Go to http://userstyles.org/ and install the extension for the browser you use most (you will need to restart your browser). You can then visit this page http://userstyles.org/styles/36309 and Install with Stylish. You will then need to edit the style to include your institutions address. On Firefox, this means making sure your status bar is displayed, clicking the icon to manage styles, and change “Your Domain” to be the right “d2l.address.edu” for your institution (this can also be done on install with the “Switch to edit” button. Chrome users can edit the domain under Window > Extensions > Stylish > Edit by adding the address under “Applies to.”

You may also alter the numbers here to fit your institutions Navigation better.

Safari

Go to http://code.grid.in.th/ to Download and Install the extension. You can then add the userstyle by right-clicking on any page and and selecting “Manage user CSS.” Enter your institution’s D2L address, being sure to include /* at the end. Add this bit under Styles and save.

.d_ma_s {width: 30% !important;margin:25px 0px 0px 400px !important;}

Internet Explorer

IE 7 Pro users may have some luck installing a user script from http://userstyles.org/styles/36309 (I couldn’t test this). Most IE users need to use a single custom stylesheet, which can be activated by using these directions.

I’m interested in feedback!

If there are tweaks that would make this more generalizable, please let me know in the comments.

Could meaningful use be applied to FERPA?

One of the ongoing struggles of the educational technologist is dealing with FERPA law and instructor/student expectations.  Frequently an instructor will want to use a tool (hosted on campus or elsewhere) and want students to have access to the tool via automatic rostering.  Registrars can sometimes be hesitant to share this data.

The health sector is actually working on this problem. In an interesting post about the concept of “meaningful use” the author shows how restrictions on data might be loosened a bit to the benefit of everyone involved(Analysis: A defining moment for “meaningful use” – O’Reilly Radar). One example:

Another important relaxation is in the area of e-prescribing. This is the ability to electronically send an accurate and understandable prescription directly to a pharmacy.

By focusing on exactly how information might be used by stakeholders, rather than enforcing blanket restrictions, there may be some real gains in the quality of patient care. I think a similar concept for FERPA might have similar benefit.

The Science Gap

Miller McCune addresses The Real Science Gap in this (rather long) article. It provides a lot of food for thought in talking about the current structure of training (and paying) our future scientists.  A brief historical bit about Vannevar Bush’s (yes, the memex guy) 5 suggestions for “the basic structures of civilian research that remain to this day,” including what became the NSF.

The article goes on to criticize that we have too many scientists in universities, for too long, working at too low wage on faculty projects not of their choosing. There is some truth to these claims, but their suggestion is pretty shocking:

Any change in the science labor market would, of course, require dismantling the current system and erecting something that would value young scientists for their future potential as researchers and not just for their present ability to keep universities’ grant mills humming. This would mean paying them more and exploiting them less. It would also mean limiting their numbers by both producing and importing fewer scientists, so incomes could rise to something commensurate with the investment in time and talent and the high-level skills of a Ph.D.

Fewer scientists?! I personally do social science, which is pretty hard, but hard sciences are even more difficult. One has to wonder if we would be where we are today if someone 50 years ago had argued for fewer scientists. Sure, there is a lot of work that is wasted (failure is an integral part of the scientific process), but this time is an investment that has brought us where we are today. Arguing to throw the whole thing away is incredibly shortsighted.

Note that the comments are worth a skim.  There are a few other interesting articles about this and related problems:

Paying the costs to learn

In “A Failure to Communicate,” Publisher’s Weekly takes a look at the Georgia State eReserve lawsuit. While there’s not really any “new news” to report, the article does a good job of portraying how difficult it can be to play by the book–or rather, the book that publishers are arguing for.

Curious about how a verdict against Georgia State might play out, Smith recently asked Duke’s e-reserves staff to give him random examples of recent permission fees. “For the 2007 book No Caption Needed, we paid $150 for permission to make just 17% of the work available to 12 students. This amounts to over $12 per student to gain access to less than a fifth of a work that sells for $35 retail. …
These are not extreme examples, Smith insists. In another example, fees exceeded $1,000, more than $25 per student.

Considering that most courses require multiple readings per week, the costs indeed would mount quickly. While campus licenses cover the majority of requests (one would hope), the problem is exacerbated by the complexity of the clearance system and the fact that faculty usually make requests close to the start of the term.

A recent study in the UK found that the peer review system “amounts to a £209,976,000 subsidy from publicly funded universities to private, for-profit journals, who then charge small fortunes to the same institutions for access to the journals.” Open journals are a great idea, but the tenure pressure to publish in elite journals have made this a tough nut to crack.

Hopefully a balance can be forged between the time and money invested in the publication process, and the social benefits of research and learning.