Over the next few months we’re going to be making some changes to MyEd. Last summer we updated the look and feel of MyEd, and made it easier to access all MyEd content on a mobile device. However, we know there’s still work to do, and next we’re going to look at ways we can improve the presentation and structure of content within MyEd to make it easier for students to find and access the information and tools they need.

Why are we doing this?

We’ve been doing quite a lot of research over the last few months to find out how students use MyEd. We know that it can be difficult to find information at times, and that some students find the amount of information on MyEd overwhelming. We’ve also had feedback that the way that content is organised isn’t as helpful as it could be. This feedback, as well as usage data which tells us which content on MyEd is used the most, has suggested a number of improvements we can make. The goal is to make MyEd easier to use, and designed around student requirements.

What will we be doing?

We’re going to be reviewing the user research we have done so far, and undertaking some more. We’re going to use the information that we get to review the current portlets (channels) and tabs within MyEd, and identify where we think we can make changes that will improve students’ experience of MyEd. We’ll work with the owners of the content to make the changes, put them into MyEd, and then we’ll ask students how well they have worked. We’ll do this by posting up links within MyEd to ask for feedback, and we’ll also be running pop-up workshops in social spaces around the University to ask students to try out changes and let us know what they think of them. For larger changes, we’d like to test these with a student user group first, so that we can gather feedback on them, and if necessary make further changes before we make them available to everyone.

We’ll be keeping you posted about what we’re doing through this blog. You won’t see changes every day, but you will be able to find out what we’re doing, and we’ll post up information about what we find out through our user research. There will also be plenty of opportunities for you to get involved if you want, by providing feedback when we make changes, coming along to one of our pop-up workshops, or joining our student user group.

Volunteers please!

What’s your experience of using MyEd? Do you find it annoying/frustrating/baffling/brilliant/adequate/boring? This is your opportunity to help make it better! If you’re a student interested in helping us to improve MyEd, and would be willing to join our student user group, we’d love to hear from you. You don’t need any specials skills or knowledge – all you need is to use MyEd regularly, be willing to try out some of the changes that we’ll be making, then let us know what you think. Interested? Sign up here.