My girlfriend started taking a Masters in a college this year. In her course the faculty have shown some disorganization and computer illiteracy since day one but the latest one…completely killed me.

Besides their personal college e-mail, they wanted a platform to make announcements for all the course (20 students). I can think of a thousand ways to do this. Hell, even a Facebook group would be better. But no…

They have an e-mail address (like Masters_name@college.duh) where all the info is sent and EVERYBODY has the password to enter the e-mail and check the inbox.

That is it. I have no words. I think this is the most idiotic and dumb thing I’ve ever seen in IT.

  • funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works
    64·
    11 months ago

    my wife is a university senior lecturer — it’s likely they already have a system that can do this, that they have access to, works, and is non-technical; all they need to do is ask where it is.

    • kureta@lemmy.ml
      17·
      11 months ago

      I went back to university last year and exactly this. They have Microsoft subscription with all the bells and whistles, classroom, work material, homework, etc.

      edit: I guess I just ADHDed in the middle of writing this comment. it was supposed to continue:

      … zoom and all its options, plus a custom classroom web app that replicates some of Microsoft’s stuff and all professors use WhatsApp for everything, and email only for delivering finals papers.

    • VaultBoyNewVegas@lemmy.world
      6·
      11 months ago

      I think it was blackboard that was used when I went to a further education college years ago. It supported announcements on it. I would imagine a university having similarly software as one of the reasons for blackboard was so we uploaded our assignments to it.

      • Thrashy@lemmy.world
        21·
        11 months ago

        I don’t know if it’s any better than it used to be, but Blackboard was pretty universally loathed by the faculty when I was in college.

        • ShunkW@lemmy.world
          4·
          11 months ago

          Dude I hated it as a student too. The only benefit it provided was a one time get out of jail free card per class. Intentionally corrupt a word doc and upload it. You just bought yourself at least a day to continue finishing your paper.

        • dingus@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          11 months ago

          You have to admit, it’s still better than having a singular email address that everyone has the login to.

  • key@lemmy.keychat.orgEnglish
    53·
    11 months ago

    It’s like someone explained the idea of a mailing list but they didn’t quite get it.

  • Spendrill@lemm.ee
    47·
    11 months ago

    Plot twist: the MA program is in Ethics and Morality and they’re in the middle of a live experiment.

  • fixerdude2@lemmy.ca
    37·
    11 months ago

    A very poor attempt at a mail-list. I wonder when someone’s going to change the password.

  • Sky_Lobster@lemmy.worldEnglish
    361·
    11 months ago

    Seems like it might be time to change the password on that email address. You know, for security reasons. 🤔

  • OpenStars@startrek.websiteEnglish
    241·
    11 months ago

    “Hey all, I wanted to say that class is cancelled today b/c of severe weather - PLEASE do not try to come in, it really is quite dangerous outside!”

    Got it, message received, [delete message]. Cleaned out my inbox today, guess I can go stay home! :-P

  • PerogiBoi@lemmy.ca
    8·
    11 months ago

    Moodle is free and open source and exactly for this (along with hosting course material as well).

  • NarrativeBear@lemmy.world
    71·
    11 months ago

    Just because I like to see the world burn I would clear the inbox/sent folders each time a email is received.

    Maybe start to draft emails with nonsense in them, such as shopping lists of items that don’t make sense together. A list of all the best bathrooms on campus. List of students in class based on height.

    Would not hurt to subscribe the email address to a bunch of junk/spam/marketing sites.

    • owenfromcanada@lemmy.worldEnglish
      8·
      11 months ago

      Nah, I’d sign up for cat memes or something, then set up filtering rules to delete everything except for the cat memes. If they’re dumb enough to think the shared inbox is a good solution, they might not know about filters.

  • sajran@lemmy.mlEnglish
    53·
    11 months ago

    Well, can’t say I’m surprised. I had something like that in pretty much every school I was in, just that ours were actually Gmail accounts. For non-technical folks it’s an easy and obvious solution. And to be honest, it works…

    • lolcatnip@reddthat.comEnglish
      4·
      11 months ago

      It “works” if everybody is well behaved and you don’t care about niceties like seeing which messages have been read.