Rubenerd

My university emailed me with a feedback survey thing. These were my responses.

Subjects and class offerings

• Greater flexibility for class offerings would be a plus. Having to be at uni for an extra semester because a prerequisite course is only offered at certain times of year is a bummer.

• A broader range of Asia-Pacific countries for international studies would also be great; aka Singapore or Malaysia. Having grown up there, I know there are loads of opportunities for UTS students.

• My Subject Activities could be improved with mobile access being enabled, ESPECIALLY for the first week of each semester when we can’t remember our rooms and are trying to read and zoom into the tiny desktop UI font.

On fees

• A calendar or some other UI to show planned and expected projected fees would make budging far easier.

• I suppose “lower fees” would be beyond the scope of this?

• Being fined $250 for late enrolment is particularly steep, especially given a number of us were forced to for legitimate reasons, including ones the university was responsible for.

On exams

• Just like to say, I had a broken ankle during my last exams and was on crutches. The exam staff were extraordinarily wonderful and went out of their way to help me get to a table and reserve one close to the door for me. Couldn’t have asked for more.

• The exam timetable does seem a tad unfair. I understand it would be impossible to schedule everyone with enough space between exams, but regularly having two or three exams for roughly related subjects within a day of each other seemed excessive.

• Memory tests exams are an ineffective and outdated mode of testing knowledge, particularly in an IT field, though that’s probably also beyond the scope of this feedback survey.

On UTS Online services

• Blackboard Learn is horrible for UTS Online and needs to be replaced. Dr. Gordon Lingard and others used their own systems separate from Blackboard, and the result was subject information that’s easier to access and use.

• I figure the talent pool at UTS would be more than sufficient to develop a far better system.