Week 6: Evaluate two E-learning websites

Evaluate two e-learning websites: 2) Ole BB

After waxing lyrical about the effectiveness of VBUS as an e-learning tool, I would like to contrast it to the Ole Blackboard, located at http://ole-bb.tp.edu.sg, which of course this CDS uses as its e-learning tool.

I first used Ole BB in my first year of study, for another CDS, and initially I was baffled by its confusing layout and cluttered display. I personally don't know which school in TP uses the blackboard as its primary elearning website, and as my school doesn't use it, I initally found it rather pointless to have to visit an entirely different website just to look for notes for one solitary subject that I was taking.

After overcoming this initial hurdle, I managed to navigate to the page for my CDS, and I was surprised by the sheer lack of organisation that was presented to me. The layout is simply unintuitive - the main page of announcements looks messy and isn't conducive for students who are looking to get information quickly. To find what I needed to do for this assignment to hand in, I had to scroll down and filter through a lot of extraneous information, when I personally feel that such important news should be displayed very prominently, as it would be what most students coming to the site would be looking for.

Furthermore, when I was looking for documents like lecture notes, I found them buried under layers and layers of menus, and it took a while to find and download what I thought was essentially simple documents. I personally feel that after my extensive experience with VBUS, where such documents are presented happily on the front page, this was a bit ineffective and rather rubbish way of giving course notes to the students. I am not trying to criticise your efforts, dear teacher, I feel that it is simply a flaw of the system that shouldn't have been ignored.

In sharp contrast to the clean, minimalist layout of VBUS, Ole BB is extremely cluttered and I feel that it simply isn't good enough as a website that students need to access everyday.

Perhaps I am missing subtleties in the system that more frequent and regular users can see, but as far as I am concerned, there is a sharp contrast between the two sites, and it isn't in Ole BB's favour.

Once again, this isnt a criticism of the way this subject has been laid out for us, but more in the system. It is simply unacceptable that two such websites can exist, for the same polytechnic, with one simply so much more well-designed than the other. Perhaps lessons can be learnt from VBUS.