Those on the Environmental Studies mailing list received the following email from the Associate Dean of Undergraduate Studies:

This is a reminder that UWAce email is to be used by students to access course materials. UWAce is not to be used to discuss course issues that are best addressed individually with the course instructor. Students who make inappropriate use of UW computer systems, including UWAce, will be subject to disciplinary charges under the University’s Policies 33 and 71, as well as the University’s IST Directions.

Please do not hesitate to contact me or the Associate Dean (Computing) should you require clarification of this notice.

Just a little background about UW-ACE.

ACE stands for ANGEL Course Environment. ANGEL is a software package from ANGEL Learning, and it too is an acronym: A New Global Environment for Learning.

Anyways, UW-ACE is a web-based course management system that enables instructors to manage course materials and interact easily and efficiently with their students— post documents, post relevant links, post grades, post attendance, the whole schbangle.

We were told that students started an informal conversation thread in the UW-ACE environment about some shit about a particular professor.

But little did they know that depending on the permissions set within UW-ACE, professors may be able to view material sent over the application even if it was not directly sent to the professor.

Although these students should know better, I have to say that I knew UW-ACE was evil from the get-go. It’s ironic the software is called ANGEL.

It already logs (1) when I have read specific email over the ACE environment, and (2) the amount of times I have logged onto the site. I bet you it logs what websites I go before and after my session to UW-ACE, too.

Scary stuff boys and girls.

UW-ACE - [uwace.uwaterloo.ca]
UW-ACE Description - [ist.uwaterloo.ca]
ANGEL Learning - [angellearning.com]