The Social Summer Part 1
This summer is setting itself up to be a whirlwind tour from one event to the next; meeting new people, gaining new skills, and generally just spending a lot of time on a train. Over the next few posts, I'll be recounting the events I've been to and the interesting things I've learned along the way.
First up, an Education Technology event on the Microsoft campus in Reading in association with the University of West London.
Last year the University of West London (UWL) upgraded their student portal and in the process won a UCISA-Eduserve Award for Excellence. Take a look at the video here for a little information on the project:
http://youtu.be/T7o0ju21PDI
Essentially they didn't have a VLE (Virtual Learning Environment) before, and what they did have was a bunch of disparate services all requiring their own logon details. For this project they teamed up with Fulcrum consulting to consolidate all their services under one single sign-on (SSO) system and also added Office 365 for Education and Blackboard (a VLE) to the mix too.
Office 365 for Education has always seemed like a great complement to education in my opinion, not only is it free (though obviously there are costs incurred by the institution for support staff etc. but the product and hosting are free, which is pretty amazing for what you get.) it has more functionality than Google Apps, and also means students get a better insight into using Office and related services, which are still used in the professional world.
I've used Blackboard as a student before and while it does receive upgrades every year I was not overly enamoured with it during my time having to use it. However, it would be a huge step up from not having a VLE at all so, unsurprisingly, the student feedback has been quite positive.
An SSO system is incredibly important when presenting a good user experience across multiple services. The average user sometimes struggles to remember one set of login details, if they're presented with having to remember (and use) multiple logins for multiple services, it can prove frustrating for both the user and the staff supporting them.
Overall it looks like UWL have made great strides forward with their student portal implementation, I believe there's a lot further for universities still to go, but change takes time so right now it's just good to know that colleges and universities are beginning to take the user experience of students using their online services a little more seriously.