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What are students saying about Learn@UW?

February 4, 2005 - Panel of 5 students
Hosted by Renee Schuh, DOIT

Document prepared by Catherine Stevens.

Learn@UW - Great for:

• Reviewing lecture material online;
• Great for courses with high level of content;
• Great for review for tests.
• Lecture material posted as PowerPoint, PDF, or HTML.
• Some preference for HTML (can open without having to download a file).
• Students appreciate bringing lecture notes to class ahead of time.
• Can focus better on lecture, and add their own notes.

SideNote:

For working with lecture notes online, student group noted – not many students bring laptops to class. One student said, I prefer to write things down in class. Another student said, if I had my laptop I would be playing games. One other student who does like to bring a laptop said, many lectures halls do not have sufficient outlets.

Good report on Learn@UW Chat:

• Chat in small groups (up to 15 students).
• A guided chat: TA poses a question, and students respond.
• Chats are archived for later review.
• Great discussions with class – very helpful.
• Like the carefree way you can sit at home and engage in the class.
• Chats are scheduled at optional times. Best times are after 4:00 pm, before 9:00.
• Students “yearning for discussion” especially enjoy.

Quizes:

• Students appreciated online quizzing.
• Instructor uses in conjunction with in class quizzing.

Threaded Discussion – working in groups:

• Instructor poses a question; student answers in depth.
• Counts for part of grade. For a course where discussions were 10% of grade, students felt should be more than 10%.
• Student often type off line, in Notepad, and then copy/paste into discussion (to avoid D2L crash).

Needs improvement..tips for faculty:

• Use the Home Page and the News to remind students of items due. Students felt this is under-utilized.
• Instructors put readings on E-Reserves, and tie online discussions to readings; so that students must have multiple windows, multiple logins running at once (LCPs will help).
• Typically, instructors need to do a better job of organizing content. In some courses, the Content (i.e. modules) is not labeled clearly, and organization of class material is poor. In some cases, instructors post lecture notes at odd times. Students aren’t quite sure when they can pick up lecture notes. Be mindful of how lecture notes are labeled and organized.
• If you can manage it, add Chat to your course.

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