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The most useful thing about being a student (MA in Higher Ed practice) and a staff member at the moment is finding out in advance what is going to work and what isn't this coming 'hybrid' year.
For example: In order to complete an essay for my current module, I have had to check no less than 4 different programmes (Teams, Yammer, Blackboard, and my emails - and then finally Prezi, which is my own fault). Nothing is in one place.
There are arguments that certain programmes are better for some things than others, but *finding* information is a lot more complex than it was when we had a simple combo of Blackboard site and our own notes.
Similarly, there is a lot of 'noise' - posts from all of these various programmes coming into my email, which is already noisy as is (though I am on annual leave, so it could be much worse). I can only imagine how students will be if they're doing this times three.
(NB: my attempt to start said essay has also been waylaid by waiting on an email from a tutor, who I would normally just go and see. That's another issue.)
(Also NB: We are now 45 mins into my free time to work on this. Which is how long it's taken to find the info I need. This is not the tutor's fault - it is trying to spread all of this across multiple platforms.)
This is a very light touch module - we didn't miss anything major due to the pandemic - but even then I'm already drowning just with platform overwhelm. My takeaway?
1. Use as few platforms as humanly possibly. It may be your OLE is terrible - most are - but if you can keep it within that, that's massively preferable to trying to use every bell and whistle known to man just because you can. Provide as many links on the OLE as possible.
2. If you are going to use things that send messages out to emails (Yammer, for ex), make sure it has a digest setting. Less cluttered inboxes mean people are more likely to read the messages and not get overwhelmed. EXPLAIN to students how to set this.
3. Also, if I'm honest (this is what I intend to do): set up a period you will just answer emails from students à la office hours. Not everyone can just drop into Teams/Collaborate/etc - and make this time public so that people know when to expect responses.
(FYI this is not me complaining about waiting on an email, honest - my colleagues are broadly wonderful - but I was thinking more that if a student emails, even with 24-hour turnaround they might need to know roughly when they can expect to hear back. [...]
This is especially and crucially important for those colleagues on fractionals who can legitimately take more than the stated 24-hour turn around. This goes beyond simply stating working days and shows when you are effectively 'available' on email. [...]
I know: time. I know: life-work balance. I know: we cannot be on all the time. I'm arguing *for* this. I think we owe it to everyone to manage expectations so that we *aren't* feeling we need to answer student emails at 2am when we can't sleep.) [Fin.]
