The top 10 things you can do to improve your students’ experience of UTSOnline.
Summary of survey findings
In October 2004, more than 6,000 students responded to a survey which sought to gain an enhanced understanding of their experiences of using UTSOnline. In general, students were very positive about their experiences as indicated by the following summary statistics:
- Most students agree that they have had positive, useful experiences with UTSOnline. When asked to rate their experiences of online learning using a five point scale (1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree) they gave the following average ratings:
- Easy to access materials 4.3
- See other students’ questions 4.1
- Stay connected to teaching staff 3.9
- Ask an uncomfortable question 3.8
- Complete tasks at convenient times 3.7
- Ask for clarification 3.7
- Juggle my studies 3.6
- Gauge my progress on the discussion board 3.6
- Students are more likely to agree that access to subject material and content via online learning has been a positive and useful experience than any other online learning activity.
- Getting to know other students who may be different in their cultural background and physical abilities is the potential benefit of online learning that students are least likely to say they have experienced.
- While there are potential disadvantages in having to use online learning management systems, most students did not agree that they had experienced those disadvantages.
- Assessment-related activities such as the ability to check marks and grades and submit assessment tasks online are considered to be useful aspects of online learning.
- UTS students are more likely than most other ATN students to agree that the interactive learning capabilities of online learning have been useful to them.
- Students spend an average of between two and five hours per week as part of their online learning experience.
- A majority of students (more than 80%) access UTSOnline learning at least once every two or three days.
- Students who spend more time online and access online learning more frequently are generally more positive about their experiences.
- Approximately 93 percent of students have access to a computer at home. Of these, almost 58% have broadband access.
- More than 80 percent of students say they have adequate access to computers at university. Those who don’t have adequate access are more likely to be negative about all aspects of online learning.
- Approximately 48% of students need further help in downloading files from the Library.
- The faculty or institute in which a student studies is generally a stronger predictor of opinion about UTSOnline than other student characteristics.
The top 10 things you can do to improve your students’ experience
There are however, many ways in which we can improve their experiences.
- email urgent announcements
- use the gradebook function
- don’t post large files
- manage the discussion board
- be consistent in use of Course Information and Course Documents areas
- provide group areas when groupwork is required in a subject
- enable the anonymous function in the Please Answer My Question forum
- don’t leave materials from previous semester’s subjects up
- respond to student questions within advertised time
- direct students to Help site
Although the majority of students log in to UTSOnline frequently, they sometimes miss urgent announcements such as the cancellation of classes due to illness. If you post an urgent announcement, also email it to all students. Examples of student comments here included:
As I do not check UTSOnline everyday, I occasionally miss emergency messages (eg lecturer being sick, class cancelled).
There needs to be an email send when new information is posted because I am busy at work and cannot check UTSOnline everyday.
I'd probably prefer announcments to be received by email rather than posted on UTSOnline, just because Im far less likely to forget to check my email.
Students really value the facility to check their marks in the gradebook as indicated by the following representative comments:
The grade book is rarely used so hard to guage how much assessments are worth and progress in subject.
Grades could be updated more regularly so you can monitor yourself as you go along the semester.
I would appreciate if ALL my marks for every assessment were in gradebook, and the percentage they were worth was correct, so I can see whether I will pass.
There is help available on how to add student grades into the Gradebook at http://www.iml.uts.edu.au/learnteach/utsonline/flash/grades.html
Although many students have broadband access, there are still large numbers who don’t, and they find it very difficult to access large files, especially those in PDF format.
large pdf files and library files are extremely difficult to download if living outside the broadband area and have to use dial-up, some lecturers don't realise this and printing these documents at uni is expensive
The PDF files are too large for my dial up internet to handle, so they don't open and i have to go to uni and spend money printing them off.
Students with slower Internet access have difficulty accessing discussion boards which contain hundreds of messages, and it is recommended that you archive discussions regularly.
.. the discussion board sometimes gets quite overwhelming and it can be difficult to navigate around it. It's quite an open kind of forum (which is good), but maybe it should be organised differently. I don't use it that often though.
Discussion boards can become too congested and with a dial up modem, it can become very, very vexating and time consuming.
There is some help available for students and staff in managing messages at http://www.iml.uts.edu.au/learnteach/utsonline/flash/messages.html
Students reported inconsistencies in the placement of subject outlines, course materials and so on. Some were placed in the area labeled course information and others in the course documents folder. It is recommended that each faculty devise a standard format for this.
It would be great if all teachers could streamline what they use different folders for. For example one teacher will put documents in course documents and another will put them somewhere completely different.
There is very little content, little of it is properly categorised, and most of the features are not used. For example, if I click 'Staff Information', I get 'folder empty'. Same with 'Books'. The info is elsewhere, but why not put it where people will look?
Students derive great benefits from the creation of a private area where their group can exchange files, discuss their work etc.
It would be useful for students to be able to set up group pages when they are in a group project together, so they could leave comments, add files to the group etc. that would only be visible to those students. ie similar to a yahoo group.
Being able to put together personal discussion boards for group work (ie under subject discussion board heading, but only limited people with access) is something that should be allowed/taught - I have heard of some people being able to do it, and sounds very useful to me.
A surprisingly large number of students expressed feelings of being too shy to ask questions and valued the opportunity to post them anonymously:
All question submissions by students should be anonymous so that students aren't made to look stupid in public
really dumb people ask the really dumb questions that you feel too stupid to ask, but still would like to know the answer to
Some students expressed confusion when older versions of subject outlines were still available.
Sometimes notices that are not relevant to the semester in which I have taken the course are visible, which is sometimes confusing, until you realise that the notice was from the previous semester. Sometimes I am unsure whether the information in course documents etc is up to date (more so at the beginning of the semester). For eg when downloading subject outline it states that it was the subject outline from the previous semester, not the one in which I have taken the course.
Students who were participating in a level 3 course clearly valued the experience. However, when a turnaround time of say, 48 hours is advertised, but not adhered to, it results in disappointment and frustration.
In the survey, many students asked questions, or asked for features which are already available in UTSOnline. As a result, an extensive help system has been built to respond to those issues, and will progressively be added to. Tell your students about it at http://www.iml.uts.edu.au/utsonline/student/
Shirley Alexander
Director, IML