Students Feedback

Meetings with FD students were taken place last month in most FD faculties Construction, Teaching Assistants, Computing, Care management and Early Years. The meeting schedule was as follows:

• talking to them informally about the support they are gaining from the college (if there is any!)
• discussing issues/problems they are encountering on FD courses
• explaining briefly about the uPortal project
• disseminating overview SURF WBL WAY handouts
• asking them to fill students questionnaire
• going through their feedback in the classroom and discussing their answers
• asking them what functions would they like to be implemented on the portal
• taking notes

I have gathered very valuable information about the barriers/obstacles they are facing which hinders their progress.

The common issue was that most of FD students were not aware of our local VLE (Learnwise), so I had to arrange specific training sessions with them to demo the VLE use. The reaction was great , they were very enthusiastic about having access to their materials remotely, using forum for discussion, downloading/uploading files

Although most of the FD students have an access to Blackboard, but they were reluctant to use it due to the:

• lack of the resources
• tutors were not keen on adopting the elearning approach in their teaching
• learners did not want extra work on how to use the VLE

The majority of the students are connected to the internet at home, however not all of them:

• having an online access to course materials
• aware of the modules they are studying
• finding the study options for the next step clear

80% of the students I have met agreed to have:

• service to guide them on future options
• history of the modules with the materials they have completed so far
• their results
• message board

All the students have approved that employers have a right to access the information about their progress, attendance, grades, etc... if they are funding them. they complained that they have not got formal qualified mentors in the workplace to support them.