DL Reviews Website

I have just finished developing a new website where people can submit reviews of DL programs. I would really appreciate some feedback on the website. Do you think it will be useful? Have I missed anything? Is there anything that is confusing or difficult to use? There aren't any reviews on the site yet since this is the first time I have announced the site publicly.

Website: http://www.OnlineDegreeReviews.org/

Recently, I've been thinking about taking a DL masters degree in computer science. Finding good information has been difficult. Especially information that is unbiased, trustworthy, and not motivated by affiliate commissions. There are lots of sites that list degrees, but hardly anything by the people actually taking the programs. Eventually, I found this forum, which has a wealth of information, but sometimes it requires a lot of searching and browsing to find what you're looking for.

What I really wanted was a review website like you can find for travel, computers, restaurants and almost anything else. Since it doesn't seem to exist, I decided to build one myself. My background is in software and web development, so over the past few months I worked on it in my spare time. It was fun to build, but it's not much good unless people use it.

All the site needs now are some reviews. I invite everyone that has or is currently taking a DL program to write a review and help get the site started. It is easy to do. My hope is that the website may one day become as trusted and well know as this forum.

Best Regards,
Steve

 

TemplateDoesNotExist

.you may want to fix it before advertising it

 

I've been testing the site for the past week or two to make sure everything is working. It's fine when I try it, and a few people have submitted reviews since my original post (Thanks!).

I looked in the webserver logs and I can see the errors you encountered. Is there a specific page that gave you that error or a URL you could provide to help me track down the problem?

The majority of page requests are working, but it looks like there is a bug somewhere. Thanks for alerting me to the problem.

Thanks,
Steve

 

I like your idea. However, You need to give users the ability to add universities. Its nice to have a predefined list but it must then include all universities that offer DL. Your list is limited.

 

bantaloni,

The ability for users to add new universities (or "colleges" as they are usually called in the US) already exists.

http://www.onlinedegreereviews.org/college/add/

There are links to "Add a College" at the bottom of the home page and at the bottom of the list of all colleges. If you didn't see it, then I need to make it more obvious. Users can also add new programs.

I'm glad to hear you think the website is a good idea. Thanks for the suggestion and feedback. I really appreciate it.

Cheers,
Steve

 

Good idea.........I'll submit a review.

 

Reader beware

I also like your idea, but I would be cautious of diploma mills adding their own “university” and then giving themselves favorable write-ups.

If you want this to be a useful tool, you will need to scrutinize every post and every university added.

Scrutinize each post for content.

1) Is the poster working for the university and filling your web server full of garbage?
2) Did someone just have a bad experience from which they are venting a bunch of irrelevant crap (like the Capella Sucks website)?

For added universities:

1) Are these universities accredited?
2) If so, then by whom?
3) How is accreditation being verified?
4) If not accredited, then how will readers know whether or not this is a diploma mill?

Just some ideas for now.

 

Good Ideas

PhD2B,

Excellent suggestions. These are certainly issues I need to constantly keep in mind for the website to trusted.

The problem of people submitting reviews based on an agenda is inherent to all review sites, not just online degrees. I think there are two parts to keeping the reviews unbiased. As you suggest, the first part is to have a human approve everything using their best judgment. Humans are much harder to fool then computers. Second, is to make sure the human has as much information as possible to verify the source and quality of the reviews.

I have implemented both of these ideas. All user submitted reviews, colleges, and programs are checked by a human (me) before getting posted to the website. Information, such as the reviewer's IP address, is also collected to help verify the source of the information.

Accreditation
Each university on the website has its accreditation information listed. Only universities that are accredited by a respected organization are posted. As with the reviews, it's a human that check this.

If a degree mill or disreputable university somehow managed to get on the website, I would hope that it would get poor reviews and it's true nature would be revealed to people.

Thanks again for your ideas, keep them coming!

Cheers,
Steve

 

eSchool News Article

eSchool News just published an excellent article about OnlineDegreeReviews.org that I thought may interest readers of this forum.

I also wanted to give a quick update on the website's progress over the past few months. There has been a steady number of reviews being submitted. I suspect that many came from people in this forum (Thanks!).

The response has been a bit slower than I expected. However, I'm still on track to reach my goal of at least one review for each college by the end of the year.

So far the vast majority of reviews have been legitimate and the rare fake reviews have been easy to detect.

I've also been trying to improve the website based on feedback I've received. In addition to reviews, people can now also add comments about a particular college or program. I've also added a blog.

 

Steve,

I posted a review on your website. The donation shows $3.00 not $5.00, maybe a typo? Anyway, I sent mine to the Cancer Soceity, great idea.

I like the site but it looks bit "busy" from first glances, but the "Add a College" area came in handy with my college. Look for my review! Coastline Community College.

Good luck

 

I may have missed something, however, I cannot add an Australian University to the board. I note that UK and South African Universities can be added.

Might I suggest that Australian and New Zealand Universities would be in a similar category to SAR, UK, and the British Virgins Isles. My universities has a significant number of students in the US and Canada

 

Steve: I tried to post a couple of reviews to your website, but it wouldn't let me, so ...

 

I think this is a fundamentally good idea.

I would respectfully refer you to this thread (the DL Wiki thread):

http://forums.degreeinfo.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=24799&highlight=wiki

which may give you some food for thought.

I would suggest that such a review site needs moderation, for the reasons brought up both in the present thread as well as those in the Wiki thread. I personally don't think that a self moderation/market forces moderation (ie degree mills will get bad reviews) system is going to work.

An interesting idea (well, maybe) would be a one stop shopping alternative for distance education information. Basically what I would envision would be a message board, a DL Wiki, and a DL schools review section, all in one site. I'm not saying that this is not a grandiose idea, and I'm certainly not suggesting that anyone should necessarily do it, since I'm not volunteering to do it. I just think that it would be a great tool.

Degreeinfo is the closest thing to that, with a degreefinder (albeit out of date) and DL articles (none recent), and a message board.

 

recruiting:
Yes, the $3 was an error and has been changed to the correct amount of $5. Thanks for the great review, it's been approved and is now published on the site. I'll work on making the home page look less "busy."

ebbwvale:
I've added Australia and New Zealand to the list of countries. Thanks!

Ted:
Hmm, that's very strange. I would really like to find out what the problem is. If you have a moment could you PM me with more information. Do you get an error message or anything?

novemberdude:
Thanks, yes I've read the thread, although I didn't comment on the idea at the time. I think the Wiki idea and my site have very similar goals, although they differ slightly on the implementation.

As you point out, moderation of the reviews is key. OnlineDegreeReviews.org has two of the three elements you suggest: a message board, and DL schools review (moderated). Instead of a Wiki, people are able to post comments for each school or a particular program. It is not a Wiki, but I think it achieves much the same result. People can contribute information in an unstructured way and build on other people's comments, but without removing them or degenerating into edit wars.

 

Strong work on the revision. I posted another comment on COSC in CT.

I think your site will take off, heck I like it! It was smart to come here and let us know you were out there!

 

Nice site. I found my program and wrote a review. I may critique it later, but for now I think it's just cool. Thanks!

 

Thanks spmoran and recruiting for your support and encouragement. I'm also glad to hear that people appreciated me talking about the site here.

I want to thank DegreeInfo.com for allowing me to announce and discuss the site in this forum. It is a great community here and I really hope OnlineDegreeReviews.org can contribute in a similar way.

And most of all thanks to everyone that has written a review or contributed to the site. Thanks!

 

Ah! Problem fixed, whatever it was. I've now been able to post some new schools and programs. Thanks, Steve!

 

Steve,

I submitted some comments and suggestions to you through the comments section of your web site.

I really like the site and I hope it takes off.

 

Steve, to fix the "add a university" from fake sources, what not have a link to query the US Post Secondary search?

http://www.ope.ed.gov/accreditation/search.asp

I think that would be incredible useful if you dumped your site to a query from this form.

Geoff