What are your thoughts about teaching in higher education? What do you like most about your courses in university? How useful are Learning Management Systems (LMS) such as Avenue to Learn in your course(s)?

We are looking for volunteers in all faculties to take part in focus groups that explore students' perceptions of teaching, learning, and online learning tools in higher education.

Your participation will involved attending ONE of the focus group sessions listed below. You will be asked to share thoughts about good teaching and learning, and experiences of using online learning tools in university courses.

Date: June 28th, July 7th, July 12th
Time: 5pm-6.30pm (All dates)
Location: Mills Connection Centre
Contact: Alyssa Lai ([email protected])

In appreciation of your time, each participant will receive a $25 Titles gift card. Pizza meals will also be provided.

Note: Only undergraduate students will be eligible for this study.

To volunteer for this study, please contact Alyssa Lai, principal investigator via email (see above). Please include your name, preferred date, department, year (as of Fall 2011), and number of courses that you have taken, which used some form of Learning Management System (Avenue, Moodle, ELM, etc.)

so what do people actually do here... just talk?

There will be approximately 5 people in each focus group, along with a moderator and a transcriber. Approximately 7 questions will be posed on McMaster's online learning systems which the participants will answer according to their own experiences and discuss with the other participants.

It is a USRA funded Focus Group, and will be transcribed and analyzed but participants will of course remain completely anonymous. McMaster has had a lot of online learning programs over the past few years (WebCT, ELM, Moodle, Avenue) so we want to find out students' experiences with these, along with more programme specific learning systems like Capstone, Capsim etc.

So long story short, yes eventually you just talk and discuss. You are well compensated for the time though, and the information we collect will be very useful.

^Is your name Manely because you're so Stanley?

Bad joke i know, but when i saw your username, i couldn't resist

Hahahaha, nope. It's my surname. Thank goodness my first name isn't Stanley!

alright I'm interested, I'm gonna try to make it to the June 28 one

Focus groups are fun and easy! Moar easy money!