Welcome Survey Takers
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
Many thanks to those who have just completed the survey on Learning Management System (LMS) functionality. We hope that this survey will give some clarity to the LMS project team on the features you use in KnightVision (Blackboard) and how you use them. We will be analyzing the data, reviewing your comments, and posting these results here on The Hoot.
Your feedback is vitally important as we work toward migrating from Blackboard to an open source alternative. Please contact us or leave comments for us on The Hoot.
-Matt Jeltema, on behalf of the LMS replacement project team
*** While you are here, make sure to subscribe to The Hoot to receive updates regarding the LMS transition, as well as other Teaching & Learning announcements, technology tips and faculty highlights.
1 comment on "Welcome Survey Takers"
What I said in the survey is that the key to the new LWS will be not features but usability. The current Blackboard/KV is so over-featured and its layout is so cumbersome that I avoid using it and avoid having my students use it unless one of its tasks is absolutely necessary (in which case I have to provide patient, extensive explanation). To take just one example, the “Control Panel” page on courses I’m teaching (which I have to click on instead of “Grades” to get to Grades, which doesn’t make sense) contains ... well, I started counting and then gave up, but it’s over 30 links on one page. Many of them are ambiguous and seemingly redundant, and you don’t really know what you’re getting until you click on them. This cartoon says it perfectly:
http://stuffthathappens.com/blog/2008/03/05/simplicity/I’m a web designer and consider myself web-savvy, and BB/KV stymies me like this all the time. What about other profs who are less comfortable with technology? What about my students who are used to the simple, fluid, intuitive interfaces of Google and Facebook?
Forget the preponderance of features; let’s make sure the next LMS is usable, first and foremost.
NB
Posted by Nathan Bierma on 10/08 at 02:23 PM
Posted in: LMS Transition
