Jan's+paper

There have been several difficulties with WebCT this year and some of these have been identified by students in the LB1 group. Discussions with these students have revealed a range of issues but also some opportunities to develop TQFE delivery methods. Analysing the different comments made by students about WebCT suggests that there is a range of problems. This is probably not acknowledged by students who see the problem as simply lack of access to WebCT. The problems seem to come under the following headings: It’s difficult to quantify the impact of these problems on students, but TQFE students are in a category that is different from many other university students and therefore the impact is also likely to be different. Lorna described some of these issues when she asked for consideration to be given to our students when a weekend upgrade was planned. The LB1 group have provided similar comments and some detail: 1.  Their time is very limited and if access is problematic on a planned working day then returning on another day is not always an option. One masters’ student arranged childcare for a Saturday only to find the university web proxy was down all that day. The other two masters students said this wasn’t a problem for them because one uses Heriot Watt resources and the other uses his wife’ s access to Edinburgh University online library. 2.  One student said that WebCT is a critical resource and without it he didn’t know what the course was about or what he should do. ‘When it’s not working you have nothing.’ He would prefer a list of web addresses or a paper copy of the course so that he doesn’t have to depend on WebCT. 3.  Some students got into the habit of printing off resources from WebCT when they had access but found this expensive and not always easy to do. 4.  One student complained about the quality of WebCT materials saying that he expected them to be more visual and auditory and found the use of text on line unsatisfactory. ‘It might as well have been on paper.’ Overall, it seems that TQFE students have high expectations of the course material and easy availability of resources is essential. If the quality or the availability is not satisfactory the impact on students is significant and our reputation is likely to be damaged. It seems to me that within these complaints we have some interesting information about the needs and expectations of our specific student group, or customer/client group. We can try to change the student behaviour and fix problems as they occur but we could also consider taking a completely different approach to providing course materials. (In my time with the TQFE team we’ve already done this three times, so clearly no problem for us!) The following blank space is for ideas and vision about how this might be done…
 * WebCT – a problem or an opportunity? **
 * Problems with accessing WebCT **
 * 1.  ** **Student behaviour –** this includes student error and lack of IT skills, but more interestingly also includes students who choose not to use WebCT. Their choices may provide us with some ideas about how to develop access to learning resources.
 * 2.  ** **Local problems –** this may be at the student’s home but more often relates to college systems that have been set up to prevent access to certain types of website.
 * 3.  ** **Problems at the University –** this seems to be mainly with links to the interlibrary resources and to URL’s which go ‘deep’ into other organisations.
 * Impact on students **
 * The opportunity **