Students like the RLOs (and cake!)

“I’ve been thinking for ages about how to get the best out of elibrary and now I’ve seen these RLOs, I’ve learnt loads.”

Last Wednesday, 31 Jan 2007, we ran a student focus group to get feedback on the BRUM project, and RLOs and information skills in general. Persuaded to attend by a ludicrous amount of mini-muffins and mini-danishes (and a small financial incentive), 10 students from a range of subject contributed to the session.
It was great to watch everybody using the materials, and feedback was extremely positive.
Specific comments about the RLOs:

- Podcasts: easy to follow, “I’ve learnt something new!” (shock, horror!) and suggestions for improvement included: slowing them down, and improving the audio quality
- Turning Point Quizzes – “these would make lectures more interesting”
- Captivate demoes – liked the idea of pausing and watching bits again. Interestingly, one respondent had already seen one of the captivates but noted “I only learnt something after watching for the 2nd time”. Also suggested making the text boxes bigger.
- CYOA powerpoints – “makes searching more efficient”
- Digital Recordings – “you can use it to teach yourself”
This was extremely encouraging and provides useful information for us to plan for the further development of some of the RLOs before next academic year. The clear message coming out of the group was “these need more promotion” as one student noted:

“if it wasn’t for this meeting today I would never have found these, and wouldn’t have even imagined that this type of thing existed.”

The 2nd half of the focus group explored self-directed learning channels and information skills more generally – will post details shortly.