Blackboard, the free program used by Southern University students and faculty, could soon be replaced with LiveText, a paid subscription-based program with the most advanced user-friendly web-based tools.
What is LiveText? What are its benefits and what are students saying about the costs for the new program.
Described on their website livetext.com, as a learning, assessment and accreditation solution, the program helps with lesson plans, portfolios, and special projects. It is an online database where educational materials can be created, shared, collected, stored, displayed, and organized all in one single location.
On LiveText’s Accreditation Management System, insti-tutions can provide students, faculty, administrators, and stakeholders the means to develop, support, assess, and measure students’ per-formances across campuses all over the nation.
Sharon Piety-Nowell, Director of Institutional Effectiveness at Bethune-Cookman University says, “After all these years, we wouldn’t still be with the com-pany if we didn’t feel we were supported!”
To undergraduate students on SU’s campus LiveText seems to be just another version of the free system Blackboard, only with a price tag of $98.
“We (students) have been trying to figure out what it is… to me it’s just an upgraded Blackboard,” said Justin Evans, a sophomore computer science major from Houston.
It was rated second among web and technology-based databases, one ranking ahead of Blackboard, the online database students currently use at Southern University.
The benefits of LiveText are somewhat significant,
•Exclusively for college students
•Provides the latest state and federal standards for teacher education programs
•Showcases work for students and teachers alike for future employers
•Files are backed up and accessible, in case something happens to your computer
•Increases users’ technology skills
•Eliminates bulky 3-ring binders
•Subscription good for five years
•Can be purchased with a book voucher
”Why are they trying to force this on students when half the campus, faculty included, barely uses Blackboard,” Evans said, “Students are barely buying books and then you want (us) to pay $98. Only one of my teachers has even required it, and she said it’s only because her chairman is requiring her to do so. She doesn’t even want to use it. I’m not worried about LiveText, I’m worried about getting my books.”
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Switch to LiveText leads to questions
April 27, 2009
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