Dear Ryerson University,

Last year, I took a distance education course through Ryerson University and I’d like to share some elements of the course structure and organization that I found extremely difficult to deal with. I do not intend for this to come across as a rant but in some situations it may seem so.

Organization of information in an online course, to me, is crucial. All of one’s questions should be answered from one specific online location that is not only indexed but also searchable. The course material was held in three different locations. The course outline was in a web format but task-based course information was released on a weekly basis in the format of a letter that you had to go in and physically download; also, the letter held superfluous information about the course and was not formatted appropriately for giving people directions as to “what’s next”. This led to me clicking around for about 20 minutes and reading for another 20 minutes before I could find what I was supposed to do that week.

In addition, online courses lose out on the ability of instantaneous question responses from professors so there needs to be some method of providing feedback; this is where the forums come in. The complaint here is that there was a load of unnecessary information within the forums and questions that should have been answered in a more public manner were buried in the thread. In addition, students would reply to other student’s questions and while their intention is to help, as a student asking a question, I want it answered by my professor – not my peers.

Here is what I would recommend to Ryerson:

1. Ditch blackboard, or at least upgrade the version – it’s horribly outdated in comparison to some of the super fast and not to mention FREE applications available out there on the internet with the same capabilities.
2. Or at least ditch the threaded forums; they are painstaking to follow and require entirely to much action on my part to be involved in (usability)
3. Use a forum like punBB it’s open source, easy to implement and perfect for distributing information in ONE location
4. Setup email or RSS notifications for the release of information. Do you know how easy it would be to make a simple facebook application that notifies your students that there’s work to be done?!
5. Create FAQ’s for those who do not like to waste time wading through the forum but do not want to waste the professor’s time either.

Thanks,

BEB

Student, Ryerson University