By David Dyck

University looking for a general assessment from student body

Last week, SFU launched a survey to gauge student opinion on a new Learning Management System to replace the current WebCT. WebCT is to be replaced by another learning management system (LMS) in 2014.
The survey is part of the first phase of the WebCT replacement program, and is taking place alongside focus groups and public forums. It will end in May of 2012, with the beginning of phase two: the “selection and implementation planning” phase.
The survey is made up of over 30 questions, with a $150 random prize draw. According to project organizers, the survey has garnered over 4,500 responses in the first week. The survey will be available to students until Monday, January 30.
Stacey Robinsmith is an SFU graduate student who has over 10 years in education experience. He’s worked with WebCT and other LMS in classroom settings, and described WebCT as “clunky” and not as intuitive as it could be. Robinsmith took the survey last week, but thought that it was too broad to be very effective. “They were pretty weak questions. The example would be: how important is it to be open, [or] user friendly? . . . who is not going to say that they want one that’s easy to use or open so that I can understand that system?” he told The Peak. Robinsmith stated that he would have liked to have seen questions about what platforms others have used, and their experiences with them. “More questions that they could have looked into were open source solutions. I don’t know if that’s on their radar or not,” said Robinsmith. He added that he was impressed with how long the consultation process is going for, and that he had been invited to a consultation group.
Mark Bachmann, communications officer for the Teaching and Learning Centre, responded to these concerns. “Obviously everyone wants an easy to use platform, but the survey will let us know for example how strongly they feel about a certain aspect of the LMS. For example, if ease of use comes in very, very high, that’s a factor we’ll take into account when we compare two systems that might be similar otherwise,” said Bachmann. He added that although they will not get specific answers from the survey, they plan to get those from other parts of the consultation process, such as the focus groups and open forums.
There are two more open forums this week on Burnaby Campus, on January 24 and 25 at Student Central.