An oversight in Blackboard's course creation tool recently allowed a group of students to create a virtual course listing for a class titled "Welfare 101," described as "how to not be a poor black man," raising concern over the use of university computing resources.
The course listing contained racial slurs as well as insensitive images and text.
After inquiry by the Collegiate Times, the listing was removed from Blackboard.
Frederick Tanner and Philip Gilliam, a sophomore HNFE major, were listed on the course's staff information page. Gilliam refused an interview with the Collegiate Times and Tanner released a statement addressing the matter.
"The course creation wizard was previously available as a module within blackboard, alongside other popularly used modules such as the dictionary, thesaurus, and calculator. It was popular opinion among my peers that if the university did not want the tool to be used to its fullest extent, they would have disabled the module. I did not create the course, nor did I condone the content," said Tanner in a statement.
Mark Owczarski, director of news and information for university relations, said the university purchased the software for the entire Blackboard suite one year ago. The software was a new product that was deployed for online courses and came with all the defaults to allow users interface with the product were all turned on.
When installing the program, the technical team tailored the program to the needs of Virginia Tech.These needs meant allowing only Virginia Tech faculty the right to post courses on Blackboard.
However, not all of these settings were changed.
Randy Marchany, director of the IT security lab, said, "These undocumented features are endemic to any software."
The setting that allowed courses to be posted was not changed, which allowed for any person with a Virginia Tech PID to post a class on Blackboard.
This is how "Welfare 101" was posted. The recent incident has been the first and only of its kind on Blackboard, Owczarski said.In response, Information Technology Services has since changed the settings to allow only faculty the right to post materials.
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I would like to comment on the following statement: "The recent incident has been the first and only of its kind on Blackboard, Owczarski said." This statement is a blatant falsification by Owczarski. Doing some research, there are multiple fake courses made public on Blackboard. Also, I personally know of a number of students who have created their own "courses" on Blackboard, but did not list them as public. The number of these is unknown to me, but the issue is definitely not limited to this specific incident.
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To the previous poster: Yes, of course other users have created fake courses and made them public. Owczarski was likely referring to this particular course as the "only one of its kind" in that it was the only one to violate the terms of use with its content.
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