Kevin Milans : Teaching : Why Class Journals?

In April 2025, an email was sent to math faculty at WVU announcing a new requirement that beginning in Fall 2025, class content must be delivered through Blackboard/Anthology's proprietary Learning Management System (LMS). Many particulars of this requirement remain vague, and no formal policy document is available, publicly or internally within the university.

Developing course content within a proprietary environment has significant disadvantages. Content distributed through the LMS is often accessible only to students enrolled in a class. When the LMS is upgraded or migrated to a different provider (which often occurs at the discretion of IT/administration, independently of faculty), all existing course materials and supporting infrastructure must be ported or may be lost.

By maintaining a publicly accessible website that uses open technologies, class materials are freely available to everyone and can remain so indefinitely. I am proud that materials that I developed in the early 2000's, when I was a graduate student, are still easily accessible today.

The justification cited for the LMS requirement is to ensure that class material complies with accessibility mandates in the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Increasing accessibility is a noble cause and can be achieved using open technology.

Nonetheless, to comply with the LMS requirement, I am currently unable to maintain official course websites outside of WVU's chosen proprietary LMS platform. Instead, I maintain informal class journals that carry much of the same content but are nonetheless independent of the classes.

Kevin G. Milans
Morgantown, WV
August 19, 2025