Dear NewsU folks:
Please, when you survey people who've taken a NewsU course, don't just ask them to tell you how valuable the course was, also ask them for suggestions on how it - and the NewsU experience as a whole - could be improved. Otherwise it's frustrating, to someone who *wants* NewsU to be a really valuable resource, to get the feeling that you might not want to hear suggestions.
(so then we go and vent on our blogs...)
My suggestions:
1) make it possible to search for free courses;
2) show course cost more prominently, so we don't have to click through to find out;
3) offer "scholarships" for the impecunious - or some other way to let them "sing for their [educational] supper"
4) for courses in areas subject to disinformation pressure, e.g. Covering Climate Change, make sure you offer the tools the journalist most needs, to equip them to protect their work from being warped by this pressure.
Thank you.
Stale blog offering Perspective on ideas, issues and life from Nevada County, California - belaboring the obvious since 2003
Friday, September 24, 2010
3 comments:
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Dear NC Focus folks,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the great suggestions.
We always want to hear how to improve our training experience.
We really like to hear your suggestions. Sometimes venting is OK, too.
1. We do have a search button that covers "Free to $25."
It is on the www.newsu.org/courses page. We look at having a button that is just "Free."
2. You have pointed out a bug that needs to be fixed. We agree.
3. We have scholarships for almost everything that has a fee. No singing needed.
We wish we had more funds available. We are working hard on that.
4. We are working on two modules about information pressure.
First, a course on propaganda. Later, we'll have something on sourcing and verification.
And we're always looking to add more to our Climate Change module.
Thanks, really, for the comments.
The Poynter's NewsU Crew
Thank you Mr. Finberg, for your fine comment and for the NewsU Feedback page.
ReplyDeleteAlas, I dropped by the site again just now, to see what's there of interest, and it's still an overly-paginated PITA to find course info on; so I submitted more feedback -
ReplyDelete"Courses data - could you make it possible for a visitor to get it in .csv format please? (presumably you have this info as a database online; providing it in .csv format would serve those visitors who don't find the current front end to be user-triendly)"
One of the things I do love about the present, compared to the past, is that websites have evolved, & are generally much less frustrating to navigate now. Thank you Jakob Nielsen...