November 20, 2019 | The Clarion
Opinion
Page 5
LETTER to the EDITOR
Campus in need of community, love
Brevard College has a wonderful community, filled with love and spirit.
However, during hard times, it’s easy to forget we can rely on each other.
We fear that we’ll be deemed a burden instead of trusting that we can
lean on our peers, faculty and staff for support. We need to remember
we can always reach out when we need a hand and when we feel alone
and need to be seen.
Sharad Creaseman, our very wise campus minister, once said “People
are always watching.” When we hear this, it’s easy to think that means
eyes are always on us and that adds more pressure on us, however I believe
instead of meaning all eyes are on us to see when we’ll fail, it actually
means all eyes are on us to see we need help.
I propose that as a college community and campus we come together
and lift each other up. I believe we should be kinder and be willing to
love on each other just a little bit more. I believe we need to be willing
to not just wait to see if someone needs our help or needs a shoulder to
cry on, but we should freely offer it.
I’ve often seen people sit alone, hoping someone will see them and
either sit with them or invite them to sit with a group of people, however
it never happens. I want to challenge the campus to sit with someone you
don’t know, someone you only know of or someone you’re in class with
in the cafeteria, at least once a week.
Sometimes, you never know just how much something small can impact
someone in a positive way. I want people on campus to know that they
are loved, and they are seen. There is no struggle too small or too large
to be shared among those who are willing to help others through their
struggles. The struggle may seem impossible to face and it may even
appear to be a mountain, but by coming together as a family, we can prove
that mountains can be moved.
— Hope Jackson, ’21
Sakai sucks...
BC s primary LMS is causing major problems
By Chloe McGee, Arts & Life Editor and
Eli Goodhew, Contributor
Fellow Brevard College students and faculty members, we hope that
the statements made in this article accurately reflect universal opinions
regarding Sakai.
As all of us should know, Sakai- LAMP Consortium is currently Brevard
College’s primary Learning Management System (LMS).
Although the open-source platform is designed to be multifunctional
and interactive, it is simply not functional and, therefore, its ability to be
interactive is hindered as well.
Even if you were to use Sakai precisely the way the software engineers
intended, the program would maybe suffice as tolerable. Brevard College
should not settle for mere tolerability, and yet we do because it’s much
more affordable than superior LMS alternatives.
While many of our professors often reference Sakai and urge their
students to take advantage of its resources, they fall short on their end of
the bargain by not reliably updating information such as grades, attendance
and assignments. However, they are not to blame because we too, as
students, recognize that Sakai’s user interface design is unnecessarily
complex.
BC Senior Shannon Kerr says that she has witnessed first-hand, as a TA,
the burden of managing Sakai from a professor’s account. She continued
to describe the prolonged and tiresome process it often took to complete
seemingly easy tasks using Sakai.
In general, for students and professors, Sakai lacks accessibility as
the website is both difficult to browse and does not provide a mobile
application for its users. It seems that many of Sakai’s features are
disposable, cluttering the website, and making it nearly impossible to
stay organized and utilize tools that would otherwise be quite helpful.
Unfortunately, the chaos extends beyond the website as Sakai regularly
spams our email accounts with confusing, encrypted code-like messages.
As recent studies have found, email continues to be the leading
communicative preference among college students. However, this data
only holds weight if emails are effective or, at the very least, legible.
After interviewing members of the student body, we found that the
most frequent recommendation to enhance Sakai’s user experience was
the addition of a mobile application; more explicitly, one that is “not like
BC Radar.”
“An app would definitely be helpful,” said BC sophomore Reese Firmie.
Finnie believes that having such resource would improve efficiency
by consolidating redundant emails and website messages into singular
notifications via a mobile application.
The ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information
Technology found that “students are increasingly using their mobile
devices and apps for learning purposes. In 2012, 32 percent of students
said they used mobile apps to complete an assignment at least once a
week. In 2014, 69 percent said they used mobile apps for learning at
least once a week.”
The standardized use of mobile apps in academia is quickly rising and
is proving itself to be one of the most efficient ways to stay connected
and engaged online.
According to the ECAR survey, in 2017, 99% of respondents owned a
smartphone while only 30% owned both a phone and a laptop.
“I’m on my phone more than my computer, so it would be way more
accessible,” said BC sophomore Sidney Robinson.
Switching to a new system, specifically one that included an app, is
critical and would increase students’ online involvement and quite possibly
their overall academic productivity as well.