OIT says the assessment is routine, and it has no plans to stop using Blackboard. But the founders of Lore are trying to establish a more dominant presence on campus.
Lore, a startup which was founded by three former Penn students, aims to integrate social networking with education. Lore’s Head of Marketing and Operations, Hunter Horsley, noted that he would like students to be as eager to log onto Lore as they are to go on Facebook.
“We want to turn a course into a community online,” Horsely said. “It needs to feel the way that [students] are communicating on the web now.”
Lore is different from Blackboard in that it allows students to create and share a personal profile. Students can connect with peers who are in similar classes, who participate in the same extracurricular activities or who have common interests. The product also has features that allow students to post links or comments that are relevant to the courses in which they are enrolled.
While Lore might be a site grounded in social networking — its student profiles, like Facebook’s, are called “timelines” — Horsley explained that the product is different from standard social media venues as it focuses on academics.
“We’re not building Facebook for college,” he said. “We’re building a network where it’s cool to be nerdy about something. We want to capture the magic of a course and bring it online for people.”
Although the product is available as a free download for any student or faculty member who wishes to try it, Lore has not yet made significant inroad on the University campus, according to OIT’s Director of Academic Services Serge Goldstein.
This year, Goldstein will help conduct the evaluation of Blackboard. The assessment is designed to generate ideas that will allow OIT to improve Blackboard in the coming years.
While Horsley said that “a lot of people don’t like Blackboard,” Goldstein explained that most students and faculty seem indifferent to Blackboard, as it is now.
“I don’t think anybody wakes up in the morning and says, ‘Oh boy, I get to use Blackboard,’ ” Goldstein said. “There are some folks who don’t like it. They think it’s stodgy or something. And there are a few people who love it. Most people are in the middle.”
OIT hopes to continue to improve Blackboard by integrating popular tools and networks such as Facebook, Piazza and Wiley into the current software.
“Eventually you’ll be using Blackboard, but you won’t even know you’re using Blackboard,” Goldstein said.
Goldstein noted that he has no intention of “throwing out Blackboard,” primarily because it has become part of OIT’s infrastructure. He explained that as such, faculty should be cautious about using software that is not affiliated with OIT.
“[Lore]’s not a product we support,” Goldstein stated. “We will never say ‘You’re on your own,’ but it’s not integrated with any of our systems. It would be difficult for a faculty member to use it exclusively.”
In an attempt to bring Lore to the University’s attention, the company has hired several Princeton undergraduates to reach out to faculty members and spread the word on campus. According to Horsley, this tactic not only informs professors about Lore, but also allows the company to “understand Princeton as a school.” Nevertheless, Lore has not yet been in contact with OIT.
“To go to faculty and students instead of us — I don’t see that as all that helpful,” Goldstein said.
However, Lore Campus Founder Nonny Okwelogu ’15, one of the three students who currently work for Lore, noted that Lore will expand on an independent basis.
“I wouldn’t want to go directly against OIT,” Okwelogu said. “But we don’t need their permission.”
Spanish lecturer Jorge Mendez Seijas first learned about Lore through Okwelogu and thinks that the software would work well for courses that require blog discussions outside of class. While he is considering using Lore in his classes, he currently does not.
“Everything it offers is what I’m looking for,” Mendez Seijas said. “It looks and works better and is more modern than Blackboard.”
While other faculty members, such as psychology lecturer Yarrow Dunham and music professor Barbara White have considered the possibility of using Lore as a supplement to Blackboard for their introductory classes in the future, it is unclear whether any professors have adopted the software.
Horsley said this is in part because there is not yet an easy way to encourage widespread use by faculty and students.
“We have not yet built a way for the school to flick a switch and have everyone use Lore,” he said.
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