Rory McGreal asks in this week’s MOOC #change11 if his description represents an accurate view of a typical situation in a Higher Education environment.
I would like to share my perception of the circumstances at a large distance teaching university in Germany. I have recently encountered the following situation. I wanted to take a week off and went online to use our new workflow system. After logging on I saw this
I contacted our helpdesk and got the suggestion to use Internet Explorer instead of Firefox. As a matter of fact, Firefox browser is not supported and you are forced to use proprietary software.
This is just a small example of the non awareness of the changed reality that is more an more using open source applications. Why don’t they support Firefox? Is it because of restricted DRM or because of just not knowing the benefits of open source? I am not sure. Also many tools provided on our Intranet are proprietary software. When I use a stylesheet for grading the papers of my students which is in doc-format and open it with LibreOffice I have to manually change some elements.
On the other side, I am following the strategy of sending documents in open source format and when people reply that they cannot open it then I send them a link to the download of the software.
This an other small things may change the mindsets and behaviours of people.
Do you have similar experiences??
You are identifying problems that any institution and anyone trying to teach/learn online are currently facing.