Faculty Survey Summary from Jan 2023

Thank you to all 245 instructors who participated in our January 2023 Faculty Survey. We would like to share our findings and the action plan that has resulted from your feedback. In the future, we hope to gain more insight from faculty and students that will help us improve the online learning experience at LSU.

We were pleased to see the majority of ratings were positive and that faculty find the native Moodle learning activities (e.g., quizzes, assignments, book), communication tools (e.g., Moodle Mail, announcements), and gradebook tools to be useful tools in Moodle.

As for areas of Moodle that respondents find problematic, the grading made up about 35% of responses. The lack of an intuitive interface in Moodle made up about 25% of responses. Another 10% of respondents highlighted a need for improved communication and training opportunities from the Academic Technology team, such as Moodle guides and trainings.

Fewer than half of respondents provided feedback on the My Courses page. The top responses were: (1) wanting more organization of courses (e.g., categorizing mandatory courses), (2) liking the features on it (e.g., calendar reminders and icon shortcuts), and (3) worrying students rely on it more than the course syllabus.

Finally, when asked for suggestions to improve FTC services, responses were overwhelmingly positive statements about the work the FTC does. There were a few requests for increased availability and more training opportunities, as well as more just-in-time training materials.

Action Items. We have identified the following action items in direct response to the above data.

1. Our Moodle development team has created additional tabs to help organize courses on the My Courses page. We have begun rolling out these designated tab areas for mandatory enrollment courses such as HRM trainings and master courses, which you should see now or in the near future.
2. Going forward, we will be improving, customizing, and increasing the frequency of FTC gradebook training offerings as well as creating and updating just-in-time training videos and documentation.
3. We are also working to improve how and where we communicate updates to faculty and students.
4. We will also be working with LSU Online’s Design & Development team to build a New Faculty Moodle Training Course to be released with our next upgrade in May 2024.
5. We are investigating ways to improve grading assignments.

We will be directly replying to some respondents over the next month with further information. If you have a Moodle feature request and do not hear from our team by the end of Spring, please submit a request to our Moodle: New Feature Intake. Find more information about these results in the attached PowerPoint.