At the moment, there are a number of tools aiming to measure student satisfaction with modules. Some of them are official university procedures, some of them are commercial products. Their main pros and cons, and how ‘Lessonplan’ differs are summarized below.

Module feedback forms

At the end of every semester the University of Southampton sends invitations to students to participate in a feedback survey for all available modules.

+    It is the official strategy for getting module feedback. The survey has been structured and approved by the University of Southampton and the results are directly influencing module planning.

–    Arguably, the number of students actually submitting feedback is a small percentage of the people attending the module. On top of that, the process is not completely transparent: results are not publicly available and there is to publicity to what sort of changes they are leading to.

What ‘Lessonplan’ aspires to overcome both those issues. On the preliminary survey, findings suggest that students would be more willing to participate in a feedback in the form of an ongoing online community and they believe this process would help them both have a better grasp of the module and communicate better with their fellow classmates.[1]

 

Module webpages

The University has set up a web page with information about each module. The webpages offer an overview of the module, the objectives, the teaching material and the assessment type.

+    The module webpages are the official source of information about modules. Being organized by the University, they should hold updated details about any module that the University is currently providing. Through the University’s Open Data plan, they are already ready to export in a machine readable format to be utilized by applications.

–    Though information is being provided for every module, this only comprises of the basic knowledge one needs to have to form a clear picture of what the module is about. Information that the students consider important[2] are often missing. For example, by looking at this module webpage, we notice that there is no information about the lecturers providing the module. Additionally, all information is static: there is no feature to allow commentary or interaction between prospective or past students.

‘Lessonplan’ aims to supplement these sources. Datasets from these webpages will form the basis of the module information hosted on the platform, but the users will have the chance to critique, add to, explain, offer advice or correct that information through relaying their own experiences.

 

Blackboard / ECS Webpages etc.

Blackboard is a platform used by many modules to distribute resources, reading and coursework to students. Blackboard also offers a section for discussions, allowing participants to send messages to all/selected users enrolled on the same module. A similar functionality is sometimes provided by the ECS intranet, which is where module information provided by the ECS department usually reside.

+    These features provide the same basic functionality as ‘Lessonplan’ and the framework to function is already present and operational at the University network. They are also platforms that users (students and lecturers) are already familiar with, so they should require a smaller learning curve to be utilised.

–    Even though these features are already integrated, they hardly get utilised.[3]

Even though the reasons for lack of interest in those particular features is out of the scope of this project, we believe that ‘Lessonplan’ will be more successful in securing student participation. As commercial products have shown (for some of those platforms, see directly below), students can be very active in communities about their courses. ‘Lessonplan’ will provide them with a dedicated space to address issues and thoughts they have about modules, a sense of empowerment, since they will be the ones driving the content of the platform and a sense of camaraderie through crowd-sourcing and peer assistance.

 

Commercial services (theStudentRoom, RateMyProffessor etc)

theStudentRoom is an online portal for a wealth of information about student life. Among student offers, discounts and lessons on budgeting, they provide fora where students can discuss course details. In fact, many threads are offering advice or practical tips on either specific coursework or general academic writing, reading and skills. Similarly, RateMyProfessor offers a platform where students can provide ratings for academics from various universities.

+    Those sites offer easy to understand advice by students for students. Also, outside of the official University environment, they offer a chance to students to voice opinions they would have censored on campus. As a result, they are often visited by academics in pursue of views not usually found in official feedback forms.

–     As commercial products, these platforms are targeted to all universities. As a result, individual content for a specific university is often random and limited. For example, in RateMyProfessor, only 48 members of staff from University of Southampton are in the database. Similarly, in theStudentRoom, a search for Social and Political Sciences in the University of Southampton yields only one result on a thread about Acceptance Offers of 2013.

‘Lessonplan’ aims to target a specific University and, therefore, offer more content both in terms of volume and in terms of suitability/relatedness. It being a standalone platform that could be integrated inside the existing University network means that it could target any University quite as well as the University of Southampton.

 

 

 

[1] A summary of the survey’s findings can be found here.

[2] See figure 2.2 in the summary provided in note 1 above.

[3] See figure 2.5 in our survey results summary in note 1 above.