May 28, 2007

(Not Really About) Institutional Blogging - Codes of Conduct

In a week or two, I'm second fiddle to Martin Weller in a workshop on edu-blogging in the OU (see the OUseful Calendar for details). One of the things I guess will be covering is what is and what isn't appropriate content.

So here's something that's perhaps a little close to the bounds of good sense...

The OU prides itself on being a distance education institution. We will shortly be requiring all our students to have internet access. We know that many of our students are in full time employment. Server stats presumably tell - err - someone, when our students are logging in (as academics running online courses we aren't currently privy to server stats... make of that what you will...)

We have internationally registered students - who pay more, I think, because we don't receive HEFCE funding for them. Presumably, some of our international students are in different time zones to the UK.

We are open to students of all backgrounds - presumably including some who don't observe "Christian" holidays.

I would guess - though I don't know - that many of our students study early in the morning, during evenings, and at weekends (even a short, 10 point course has an expectation of a nominal 10 hours study per week). Maybe we have survey data on this? That is, data on daily and weekly study patterns over 24 hour and 7 day cycles?

The OU's original mission was to be "'Open as to people, open as to places, open as to methods and open as to ideas"; more recently has come the recognition that time is often a barrier to entry, and one that is often discussed in terms of presentation patterns and course workloads.

So what sort of helpdesk support, particularly computer helpdesk support, should we be offering as we move towards requiring our students to have internet access? 24/7 most of the time? 24/7 in the Tesco sense (i.e. 16/1, 24/4, 22/1, 6/1)? Or something rather less? Like this maybe?

That is, 13.5/7, except Bank Holidays and Wednesdays...

If a significant proportion of our students are studying "out-of-hours", are they being fairly supported? Especially when you take into account that it's during the early hours computer systems do seem to go down, albeit often only temporarily...

(Hmm, now what prompted this post, do you think? ;-)

Posted by ajh59 at May 28, 2007 02:10 AM
Comments

It'd be interesting to know how much this would increase the cost of courses - apart from the fact that you'd obviously need more folk to do support, I have no idea how much more you need to pay people to do night shifts. First line support might be doable (and possible to outsource to a different time zone even) but I doubt second line support would be.

I'm guessing from the point of view of somebody high up in the university increasing the course fee is likely to seem more of a barrier to entry than not have 24/7 Computing Helpdesk support - whether it is or not, I have no idea though!

Posted by: Juliette at May 28, 2007 10:31 AM

Agreed - there are bound to be cost implications, but there are different sorts of support that could be provided.

The question is: do we not support the few?

And are the few in a particular category only a few because of poor access/support for people in that category?

Last night (1.30 am, say) I tried to access a (student facing) system that was temporarily down (it was back within 5 mins of me finding it down). The error page was minimal technospeak and not informative (not even in technospeak). There was no obvious way of finding out more information about likely downtime or how to report the issue.

On the wider issue of *support* we could offer an ask/answers/Q'n'A powered 'active FAQ' service maybe? I think there have been several attempts at this in the past - not sure what the current state of play is?

Here's one example, relating to prospective student admissions: http://www.askadmission.net/open/aeresults.aspx

As to night shifts - if we're open as to time zone, are we going to have national offices providing local daytime support, or somewhere central offering 24/7/365 support?

Posted by: Tony Hirst at May 28, 2007 11:55 AM

Much as I moan about the limitations of WebCT at times, I can find out when my students are using it!

The question of "out of hours" support is something that we bring up periodically, and it's not just students outside the UK who need it; quite often UK based students seem to work at times that are outside our supported times. I think it's something that Universities need to consider & students may well start to consider.

Posted by: Emma at May 28, 2007 08:44 PM

I think it's wider than that Tony. The majority of our students study outside office hours but the only study support is through tutors (some of whom are only available for limited periods) and the support line (which is M - F, 17:00 - 20:00)

Do we need to move away from time-boundaries?

Posted by: Nigel Gibson at June 5, 2007 07:55 PM