Is this on the Quercus (or Blackboard or whatever) site? How do I get my course grade breakdown? Why don’t you use campus-based apps?
I do not use campus-based apps for any of my classes; I allow my TAs to make their own choices regarding those apps, though.
If you are looking for course materials on a campus-based app (like Quercus), you probably will not find them there. Check your course’s website (see the links in the menu bar above).
If you try to contact me through a campus-based app (like Quercus), I probably will not receive your message.
To contact me, follow the instructions under “Resources” in the menu bar above (or click here); to receive contact from me, be sure to add sergi.utoronto@gmail.com to your email contacts — and check your Junk Email or Spam folder after the first week of class to make sure emails from sergi.utoronto@gmail.com aren’t being misfiled there (you should be able to click on any misfiled email in order to change how future emails are handled).
I do not use campus-based apps to post information about students’ course grades; if you would like a full breakdown of your course grade (ongoing or past), email me and I’ll send you a file with all the information. Your request indicates that you are comfortable with my sharing your course grade information by email. If you are not comfortable with my sharing your course grade information by email, you can meet with me in person (or otherwise in real time) during Office Hours — I can break down your grade in person.
All of this might seem odd, a bit “crotchety man in a log cabin with a tin-foil hat” — but my reasons for avoiding campus-based apps are sound:
As far as I have seen, campus-based apps are glitchy and inefficient. It seems like every new year brings some new unforeseen problem with a campus-based app that requires hours of extra work from profs and/or students. In the non-campus-based apps I use, searching is easier, storage is less limited, organization is far more straightforward, and I have far more say in how my materials are presented and collated.
As far as I have seen, campus-based apps change over and are replaced or overhauled too often. How many years will pass before the next time university administrators inform us that we’re starting out on an Exciting New App that will require us to relearn everything, for many hours, and that may not allow us to migrate all (or any) of our prior files across the change? (And, for what it’s worth, I’m not super-convinced that such an ad hoc program for storing data is more secure than the ones I use.)
As far as I have seen, campus-based apps mute or muzzle attempts to engage unregistered recipients. It’s hard, and sometimes impossible, to use campus-based apps to include anyone not immediately on the class roster — including not-yet-registered students, not-yet-appointed TAs, guest lecturers, and former students who have dropped the class but still are interested in some material — on class announcements. (I might also, from time to time, want to share a video lecture with a friend or colleague!) And when class ends, if a student wishes to remain in contact, for whatever reason, it’s much easier and friendlier to just have opened up the channel by email — and if a former student, say, wants me to write a recommendation, I can use non-campus-apps to access all the exchanges I’ve had with that student before.
I avoid campus-based apps as a statement of ownership over, and independence regarding, my intellectual property. I am a proud member of the University of Toronto faculty, and proudly contribute my scholarship to the university community, but my scholarly work does not belong to the University of Toronto—it belongs to me, so I prefer to exercise choice here to reaffirm that I have choice.
As far as I have seen, campus-based apps contribute to the dehumanization and patronization of university students. It’s usually in small, subtle ways, but in my experience, campus-based apps tend to present students to themselves, and to each other, as non-individuals, as numerical functions, or as overgrown children incapable of thinking for themselves. Non-campus-based apps, of course, also contribute to consumerism, which isn’t much better — but to me it’s provisionally preferable.