Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

Spring 2016 online student survey results

Posted by Andy Freed

Here are the results of the Spring 2016 Online Student Survey. I’ve been trying to present them to our Distance Learning Advisory Council first, but the meetings keep getting canceled due to weather closures.

The survey asks online students about their preferences for interacting with the College, about their experience in online classes, and what worked well for them. Here are a few examples from the survey results.

Q1) As an online student, I prefer to receive information and updates from the college about available services via: (check all that apply)

This is consistent with the results from 2013 as well. While the world cries that email is dead, our online learners rely heavily on the mode of communication and would love it if all our college services supported it.

Q3)  “When I go online to view and work on my distance learning classes, I would like the navigation, layout, and general appearance to look the same from one distance learning class to another.”

While the results have changed a little since 2013, the overwhelming preference among students is for consistent navigation and layout between courses.  We’ve sung this chorus for years, but we’re also going to be updating the visual interface for D2L Brightspace in the coming year to give it a modern “lift.”

There’s a lot more in the full report. We’ll try to revisit some of the specific results in the coming year both on this site and in work groups.