Following last weekend’s Blackboard upgrade, a refresh of shuspace is now underway. You may have noticed some of the changes already, others are still in the process of being implemented and are expected to be finished by the end of the week.
This refresh has been driven by student feedback on shuspace which highlighted a need to reduce clutter on tabs, make the most used tools more prominent, and improve access from mobile devices.
Some of the modifications include:
- A new banner and colour scheme throughout shuspace.
- A responsive display which automatically adapts the design of the webpage to suit the device on which it is accessed. For instance on a mobile phone, the content is displayed top to bottom rather than in a 3 column format.
- The login page now allows search of shuspace content, so new students can access information even before they have an institutional login
- The login page has a single prominent message, allowing the University to target key messages to students more strongly.
- Once a user has logged in, there is no longer an option to add additional channels to each tab. Removing this option frees up considerable space on the page, and it was not a heavily used feature in shuspace.
- The bar at the top of MySHU (where the search box was) has been removed, and the search channel will be added in the right-hand column soon. Again this was to free up additional space on the page for students to access the core tools and information they need.
- The sub-tabs for Notifications Dashboard and My Page have been removed as again they were not used much and free up more screen space.
- Changes have been made to some of the other tabs on shuspace to reduce the number of channels and ensure key services are highlighted better.
Users will also no longer be able to rearrange the channels on their tabs. Having a consistent place for channels will allow us to create better support guidance and signpost to students where they can find key resources, as well as maximise the use of space in the tabs.
For now, if you wish to search for particular content in shuspace we recommend using the search box on another tab, such as University Life, until the search box is replaced on the MySHU tab.
We appreciate your patience while shuspace undergoes these changes to improve the student experience.
Not being able to re-arrange the pages is a retrograde step, and significantly reduces the customer friendliness of blackboard. Having the module lists in the middle is much more sound from an ergonomic point of view as these are then straight in front of you and are the most in use. Also the ability to remove unnecessary channels (like helpdesks from other faculties) significantly reduces the clutter on the page!
Very unhappy about this move!
Not customer friendly, not ergonomically sound.
Thanks for your feedback Petra, we will be looking at all the feedback to see how we can further improve things. We are looking into solutions for the staff issue around multiple helpdesks, which is not an issue with students as the system can identify which faculty they are in.