We've been collecting survey responses from our first semester, and they look pretty good. Obviously, we've got to actually enter them into electronic format (groan), but I think that we'll be able to say some interesting things.
A couple previews:
- Students think that privacy controls offered by Elgg are crucial.
- Students really think that it's important to have class activities on an academic site, rather than a commercial one like blogger/google groups/etc...
- Most students felt a sense of ownership over their posted material.
- Students think that the website is clunky and kind of hard to use.
- A significant number of students prefer Elgg over a traditional CMS like WebCT/Blackboard
- A surprising large number of students have shared their profiles with friends/family/advisors (esp because we didn't encourage that at all).
- The wiki add-in I created was heavily used. Some students liked it, but there were a number of usability complaints.
More to come in a couple of weeks...
