Having finally decided to get my arse into gear and get some undergraduate DL courses in economics/stats/management under my belt during the [US] summer session, I've spent a considerable amount of time this evening becoming increasingly frustrated by the web sites of a large number of DL courses/institutions. As a consumer, I want to know up front: a. What the course will cost me. I don't want to have to wander off to a completely seperate section of the university web site to see what the fees are. b. Whether the course will run in this session. No, I do not want to pull up a seperate browser window with a matrix of little ticks or blanks to show which sessions the course will be run in. c. What the examination arrangements are. I'm based in the UK, and I'd essays/case studies rather than having to arrange a proctored exam (or worse, exams). I want to see, on the first page about the course what the assessment methods are. In particular, if one can only take the exam on campus, I really don't want to have to spend ten minutes navigating a badly designed web site to find out this fact. d. Nomenclature. If a course is descibed as online, then it should be completely online. A course that has a proctored exam at the end is not online. Ditto if something is described as independent or correspondence study. Thank you. I feel a lot better now. Oh, and the choice now seems to be between Empire State College and UMass Boston. Angela
Hi Angela - Having spent more than a little time perusing university websites I would have to agree that they are not oriented toward the needs of adult DL (prospective) students. In short, they're a pain in the ass. Beyond that however, I've found it interesting to do a sort of "reverse engineering" on these websites in attempting to discover exactly to whom they are designed to appeal. My conclusion . . . the parents of prospective students. Many will skip to the "fees" page before they even glance at the rest. You (we) are a minority group and will rarely see our specific needs addressed in the manner you've thoughtfully suggested. Jack BTW, UMass Boston is a nice, urban sort of campus designed for commuter students. Lots of red brick with the harbor on one side and the highway on the other. This means nothing to DL students but it's all I've got in this instance.
Oooh. All in one nice little menu at the left in a decent sized font, and the course has all the info about registration dates, fees and who teaches it. Whatever they're paying the people in central infosystems who came up with that, it's too little! Especially as getting all the data and agreement from the departments no doubt took three years of angst and argument. Sigh. Such a pity that they haven't got the courses I want. Angela
