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| Purple Syllabi: confessions of a mimeograph sniffer. |
Jurassic Park (the first one) owned the box office. I was teaching at a poverty row college. Our staff retreats too frequently concluded with faculty appeals to gods and donors for the wherewithal to make payroll.
There’s nothing sexy about a college operating budget. Folks give to buildings and named scholarship funds, but you just can’t mount a commemorative plaque on a light bill. So the president unveiled a plan whereby we might “cut our way to prosperity.” In practical terms: bring your own coffee to the break room, say goodbye to departmental secretaries, and – for goodness sake – make fewer copies.
The internet was young. And so was I. Cut-backs prompted my move of syllabi from Xerox and A.B. Dick (yes, the purple mimeograph with the evocative aroma) to a new form on-line. In the early 90s, the idea was revolutionary. I begged for and was begrudgingly permitted a sliver of the school’s server (more about that later).
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At this point, permit me an illustrative flash forward.
A couple of years ago, a student working on an independent capstone project got it into his head that he simply had to rent a Red. "It has the best image quality," he said.
"Okay," I said. "Those files can get pretty big. Where are you going to store them?"
"Don't worry about it. I've got external drives. Terabytes are cheap."
"Okay," I said. "You've got drives... and you've also got back-up drives, right?"
"Dude, I've got this," he said. He raised his hand to stay the over-cautious input of this outmoded professor. It's true. I've more than once sliced fingers editing. What could I possibly know about Epic's gift to mankind, more computer than camera?
"Okay," I said. "You want to talk about file compression at all?"
"Nope. I'm shooting raw," he said.
"Okay," I said. "Um... you want to talk about output resolution or, you know, projecting your final project?"
"It's gonna be 4K. The best-looking thing that's ever been shot here," he said.
"Okay," I said. I surrendered the guy to his own white-knuckled grip on ignorance. I didn't mention that the campus didn't own a 4K projector. I didn't mention that he'd grow old shoving huge raw files back and forth between external drives and an iMac. He wanted what he wanted. He coveted the latest and greatest, not because it was the right choice for his project, but because it was new and shiny.
Fortunately, we professors are seldom as silly as the gearheads we teach, right? I mean, we'd only ever upgrade from paper to on-line syllabi if the gains were obvious and considered.
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My first foray onto the web was about what you’d expect from an early adopter of the time. I digitized a document designed for the physical world. Naturally, I did add clip art. Ooooh… pretty. Don’t judge me. Saved by the Bell was still on the air.
Students copied the url and marched to their dorms. They cranked up computer lab printers and, for a dime a page, they made physical copies for themselves. The chief benefit of the online syllabus, then, was that I had reduced my printing budget to nearly zero by shifting the cost to students. Did they complain? Hardly ever. They were too impressed by the one progressive professor who was actually employing the internet.
Successive versions of my syllabi grew into their venue. I branded myself with graphic consistency. I linked assignments to resources and readings. I illustrated concepts with embedded video clips. I made navigation among topics less linear. I automated updates.
Hoping to lure other professors to the internet, the college bought into early versions of Blackboard. By then, however, I’d invested too much in the creation of my own websites. I used only the grade book functions of the class management program.
One August, the funding appeals fell short. The entire Communication Department (that is to say, “me”) was axed. I taught out the year and packed my office. Into file boxes went texts by Zettl and Gomery, 1” cassettes of my thesis film, and the gifts of appreciation that those in our profession accrue.
Finally, I stood alone in the office with sunbeams, dust motes, a college-issued computer. I stuffed a CD-ROM into the drive and summoned files from the campus server. But they weren’t there. The syllabi I’d revised for nearly a decade had been erased. “Graduation was last week,” said the IT guy. “I thought you’d left.”
It sounds unthinkable to modern ears. But at the turn of the millennium, the digital lives and assets of even mid-sized institutions were governed by few established protocols. Only a select group of star authors and researchers were ever troubled by intellectual property concerns. There was no cloud back up. No private webhosting. No social media. No Google docs. A precious digital thing could be secured only on physical media (I feel so very old explaining this).
I am not stupid. And I am certainly not offering the sort of excuse we hate hearing from our students. The dog did not eat all of my homework. Of course I had back-up copies of previous versions. And, in a way, I’m grateful for the new growth that can only follow a cleansing forest fire. But the stories that eventually produced www.brianfuller.org suggest a suite of useful questions:
- Is your syllabus a fit for its medium? If you're on-line, could you credibly explain to your students why?
- If your syllabus is on-line, does it have the non-linear functionality students associate with the websites they frequent?
- Is your syllabus responsive? Does its code automatically detect, distinguish, and adapt to laptops and mobile devices (by far your students' preferred way of accessing the web)?
- Is your website available as a downloadable app? Should it be?
- Does your institution or regional accrediting agency require paper copies of syllabi be maintained in departmental files?
- Does your site model the principles of design, rhetoric, privacy, security, and reach you espouse in class?
- Who owns your syllabus?
- Do your institution’s intellectual property policies apply to your syllabus?
- How interdependent is your syllabus on links to the college website?
- Should you move to another school or profession, are there obstacles to relocating or reusing your online course materials?
- Do your online course materials include student-created media? If so, are you permitted to embed it?
- How is your site archived?
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