To: eCollege/Companion Saint Michael’s College Faculty

From: Cynthia Kelley

Date: April 6, 2004

Re: Faculty eCollege Survey Results

Here are the results from the faculty members March 2004 survey of the Spring 2004 pilot. The pilot group consisted of 20 classes with 14 professors and 503 students participating.

Summary: Overall feeling on eCollege is positive, not exuberant, but favorable. There are some areas where eCollege needs improvement: ease of use in dropboxes, grading, calendar and discussion forums. The online tutorial could really use some improvement. Faculty members would like more flexibility and would like to click fewer times to get needed information.

Overall results:

Twelve faculty out of the fourteen eCollege participants responded to the survey.

System Reliability	No one encountered any access problems with eCollege.
Attractiveness	50% found the site attractive 25% found the site nothing special 25% found the site clunky
Efficiency	50% - easy to navigate 42% - sometimes difficult to navigate 8% - difficult to navigate
Training	33% - one workshop sufficed 33% - more than one workshop helpful 33% - workshops were not necessary
Manual	Almost everyone used the manual and found it helpful although the manual should have an index and better organization.
eCollege Help Desk	Everyone who used the Help Desk found the Help Desk to be responsive and accurate
Online Tutorial	Our faculty were not impressed with the online tutorial
Setting up a Course	About 50% of pilot group found setting preferences, adding units and content items and posting announcements to be easy and efficient. Problems were sited with the ease of creating dropboxes, setting up the gradebook and using the calendar
Using the Course Content	Most of the respondents (who used these features) felt that changing unit names, uploading files, adding to the webliography, were easy and efficient. Problems were sited mainly with dropboxes, discussion forums and doc sharing although these were rated mostly “sometimes problematic.”
Other systems	Half of the participants had only used eCollege but of the other half who had a preference of systems, not one system seemed to stand out with more than one vote, except Blackboard with 2 votes as a favorite. 2 faculty members responded that most course management systems seemed about the same.
Detailed statistical results available upon request

Detailed remarks (all remarks are included):

• The main problem is that the system made a lot of assumptions that didn't fit with the way I run or think about my courses. Stop trying to tie things into that left column. Use the left column as links for students to get to the different areas... 
• I am still unsure what to make of all this. It will be in March when I attempt to use threaded discussions that I will be in a better position to judge. Now, it is basically redundant with what I do inexpensively with low-tech. 
• Overall very satisfied 
• Too rigid, and designed with seemingly prescribed intended uses. Discussion formats should be more flexible to allow various kinds of online discussions (not by topic or single "thread"). Quiz/test banks should have randomization function. Entry page and layout of site should be alterable. Week/unit format too restricting and unhelpful. Requires too much setting up 
• EST not MST -- Make calendar easier to use and not tied into your course content; just let profs create their own calendar -- Make it so that you can access discussions by topic on the left hand side -- Make it so that professors can grade papers without downloading them and then return them immediately. --make it possible to turn in more than one paper in each dropbox – 
• The ability to upload my syllabus which is in Word. Now, I have to "cut and paste" each class (42). 
• I would like to see the discussion set up more like a standard electronic bulletin board (where you are able to see multiple topics on the first page). 
• add ability to edit documents "in place" for collaborative work and evaluation. avoid the need for downloading, editing in native application, and uploading new version.
• gradebook is confusing 
• Fairly significant front end investment of my time. I had been doing discussions via e-mail and had become quite efficient with student contributions etc. -- this spreads them out all over the place. How about this -- click on the student name and open a window with the student's contributions to all discussions etc. This would allow one to go further than the "minutes on" indicator. Must get back to work............... Want more input? Think junket. Random sample your users and get them to chat on-line or in a live session in person. 
• Email function in webct far superior. Instructor has choice of keeping all emails on webct's server, this is very convenient when following up with students
• Discussions are very difficult to manage as opposed to webct. Webct has a separate area where all discussions are maintained, so it is not necessary to go back into the unit to find the discussion. This makes for ease in navigating between discussion topics. Spell check is dated awkward to use.
• Make the webliography like a blog -- go to a site, click a button and it adds to the webliography. I set up a blog independent of the site to do this -- using the blogspot on the Google tool bar I avoided grade sheet as I need to be able to able to record points, calculate percentages and then weight -- the gradesheet can't work for me. I heard that the drop box was inefficient for returning graded student work -- I avoided it. Reviewing journals was inefficient -- when the "new" item report appears for journals, make the names clickable so one can go right to the student's journal. OR make the class list clickable to journals the looping to the dropdown is inefficient and problematic. Put our student IDs in the record as I sort by ID sometimes. Widen character width restriction for section buttons. When new item reports contributions to threaded discussions, make that a hot link to the discussion topic itself if it's a choice from a dropdown -- this makes my reviewing inefficient. Make it easier to replicate GROUP threaded discussions -- I had to redo those items and retype text. I wanted identical threaded discussions for groups.