OU Web Standards

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As one who is proud to be an OU graduate, I have to say that the OU currently seems to be letting itself down rather badly on some of its websites. The revised iSpot site has been the subject of a considerable amount of well deserved criticism. I have just completed a course on the OpenLearn site which was meant to require around 24 hours of study time. I reckon it required less than 4 hours and even that could have been halved if the response times from the site had been up to scratch. Add a re-launched course with out-of-date materials and end of section tests full of 50/50 questions, questions which were little more than spelling tests and questions with incorrect answers and the result is something substantially below the standard I know the OU can achieve.

On iSpot we are disappointed with what we are seeing. Unfortunately this may just be a symptom of a wider ill.

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That’s interesting, not to say disappointing. As I said before (when the forum was very active with comments about the various bugs), I felt slightly embarrassed on the OU IT people’s behalf. Appalling coding of a flawed basic (no pun intended) algorithm.
Oh dear, I’m becoming one of the “ye mead is not what it used to be” crowd…

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Yes - abysmal. It is really the lack of Comms that is SO disappointing here.
Southern Africa are unbelievably active in iNaturalist at the mo. with daily communications about testing, changes, additions and improvement - it’s remarkable. Many iSpot migrants are posting successfully there and are now lost from iSpot

Don’t feel guilty - we ARE iSpot, without active, critical and experienced users, it is NOTHING…