1y ago

I'm trying to think of something more stupid than this but it's not easy...

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.

28 comments

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.
- 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.
- 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.
  
  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.

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

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

A very poor attempt at a mail-list. I wonder when someone’s going to change the password.
- Or delete all messages and trash.

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

"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

Connect via POP, Instant fun
- Why? Can you please explain the joke to me?
  
  Many emails clients automatically delete the messages on the email server once they locally download them.

Simple. Elegant. Perfect.
10/10

@college.duh
chefs kiss

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

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.
- 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.

Sir this is a wendy's
- I'll have a Loaded Nacho Triple Cheeseburger with extra chili on top. Actually make it two of those. Oh and a small chocolate frosty.
  
  (small cause I'm on a diet)

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...
- It "works" if everybody is well behaved and you don't care about niceties like seeing which messages have been read.
  
  lol yea I'm changing that password first chance I get just for shits and giggles

Would expect nothing less from an MA program.

28 comments