so we all accept that the ou is moving to be more responsive to what the market wants in terms of course products.
how about we get tutors to `pitch' their course ideas to students on the new sesame site? the most popular potential courses will float to the top (digg-style) and provide some decent evidence for potential market.
Ideascale would also enable students to give us their own thoughts on what courses they would like to see the ou provide.
Psychology courses are massively popular. A single set of voting on all courses *might* mean they are dominated by psychology courses at the top. Does this mean other courses should/would not be pursued?
Hmmm... don't know how to vote on this. I need an on the fence option for my comment type. Won't we only be able to see the courses that the web savvy like? It would be good to see there was definite interest in a course but you wouldn't be able to say that those that got buried don't have a market. You might just have to accept some courses attract luddite students. Also you'd want to collect data on where these users came from - continuing students, new students, international visitors. I do like the idea of a Dragons Den for academics though... ;)
@Martin - good point. perhaps separating out potential courses would be best. you could then ask psychology students to vote only on potential psychology courses etc. There then might be a general area where you can vote on general courses that you might find interesting that do not relate to your current studies.
@Laura - yeah, good point too. Any votes would just be indicative of support, but i take you're point that they would just be indicative of what web-savvy users think. however surely this is the case with any type of feedback? If we ask students to participate in feedback via sesame we're just hearing from those who bother to read sesame, if we ask people to fill in a q/airre we're just hearing from people who feel happy sharing their opinions in this way. something like this would just form a small part of the overall picture
Would it be possible to set up different course category areas loosely related to programme/degree areas, that could be used to identify new course ideas in programme areas? Not sure how you'd then support ideas for new programme areas, rather than courses, though?
I agree with Laura - using this technology means that course design would be skewed towards a market who favour this kind of technology. Nothing wring with that as such except there is still a big lump of folk - probably in our WP constituency - who don't play on the web (yet!)
I do like the idea of the OU getting feedback on its courses (current or proposed courses), and ideascale looks like a possible medium for doing that. But I have reservations about using it as a voting mechanism for the web-savvy to vote in the courses that sound most attractive to them. Ros
Interesting and slightly ironic that people are concerned that the only people responding would be "web savvy" and into the online experience when we are continually moving in that direction and becoming ever-increasingly online with course delivery. ELQ is making faculties and course teams think very hard about what they offer almost so that a course is no different than any other commercial product - I have heard people say that certain low popularity or niche courses available or in the works will be cut in favour of more popular (and likely bland and generic) courses with popular titles to increase subscription.
So I think it could be a valuable tool to see what a certin type of person is interested in but, like any one tool, would not be wholly representative.
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