The secret committee that I wrote about has issued their report. The majority report recommended the campus switch to Blackboard Learn. The minority report, drafted by the associate dean who had contacted me, argued that it would be a terrible mistake to do so. A colleague and I drafted a motion for the Faculty Senate to charge three committees to report on the issue and report back by the end of January. It might have been better to ask for an ad hoc committee and given then a bit more time, but we were concerned that, given the recent history on the campus, we might be surprised by a fait accompli during the January break, and come back to find the decision already made. Our motion read as follows:
WHEREAS changing the selection of a Learning Management System profoundly impacts the ability of Teaching faculty to accomplish their academic goals and
WHEREAS the Learning Management System Advisory Committee, in a short time and with minimal Teaching faculty input, has recommended that the University of Massachusetts Amherst switch from Moodle to Blackboard Learn and
WHEREAS a previous, year-long study, that included considerable input from all of campus, had identified Moodle as the best fit for the campus,
BE IT THEREFORE RESOLVED that the Faculty Senate (1) charge the Academic Priorities Council, the Academic Matters Council, and the University Computer and Electronic Communications Committee to review the findings of the Learning Management System Advisory Committee and to present a report to the full Faculty Senate at its first spring semester meeting, on January 31, 2013; and (2) recommend that the University of Massachusetts Amherst postpone action on switching Learning Management Systems until these reports have been received so that the impacts on Teaching faculty can be understood.
During the Announcement period, the provost took a few moments to express his concerned that there had been a "misunderstanding" about the committee. He said that the previous year-long study had focused on faculty who used learning management systems, but that the Deans had felt left out -- like their voices hadn't been considered. And that the committee had given the task to the Deans to solicit faculty input. But he indicated that he welcomed the further study and appreciated the short time line that would allow action to proceed and opened up the possibility that we might yet retain options for both LMSes to be available for faculty.
During the Question Period, I stood and said that, rather than asking a particular person a question, I had a couple of questions for the whole audience. (As an aside, it's worth noting that, in the faculty senate, the Administrators generally sit on one side of the auditorium, and the faculty sit mostly on the other.)
"How many people have read both of the reports from the LMS Advisory committee?" About 15 people raised their hands -- essentially all on the administrator side.
"How many people were even aware that this committee existed prior to the motion appearing on the Faculty Senate agenda?" The same hands went back up, again almost all on the administrator side.
I thanked the presiding officer and sat back down. I probably should have followed up my questions with remarks to the effect that nearly every faculty member I've spoken with has been stunned and perplexed to hear that this process was going on and that it had been constituted the way that it was. But I thought my demonstration still made a powerful statement.
The agenda was mostly dominated by the theatrics around a motion to ask the administration to rescind the multimillion dollar debacle of moving to FBS football. I had been involved in drafting that motion as well, but the Rules Committee had refused to put the motion on the agenda. There was an effort to suspend the rules to consider the motion, which failed when the ex oficio administrators, in bloc with the rules committee, managed to thwart the more-or-less unanimous will of the faculty to consider the motion.
As an aside, I have been, for years, trying to get faculty to recognize the importance of occupying the faculty senate seats and attending the meetings. Only 25 faculty showed up (of the 57 senators currently extant; of the ~100 we could have). So its really our fault for failing to recruit our colleagues to participate. That doesn't make it any less egregious and embarrassing, to see the administration trot out their various ex oficicio members with the goal of thwarting the will of the faculty.
We requested to suspend the rules again to consider our LMS motion earlier in the agenda, before the regular business of the Senate, so that people who wanted to speak to our motion wouldn't have to wait until the end. This time, the motion to suspend the rules was unanimous and the vote on the motion was also unanimous.
So we now have a month in which to make our case that the campus should support innovation and Free Software rather than be a mere consumer of a closed-source corporate product. At least now the lines have been drawn and the battle is out in the open.
- Steven D. Brewer's blog
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