Uniservity

[elloyd69]

We are just in the discussion process regarding new VLE and think we are going with Uniservity (one of county's 3 recommendations and what feeder schools are using). Just curious as to whether anyone has any experience with it (good or bad )??? Thanks guys.

[matt40k]

(neally) every school in Suffolk is using it. Personally I prefer SLG2 or Moodle.

[Domino]

A quick forum search for the term uniservity should be pretty enlightening...

 

Personally I wasn't impressed - the system was pretty unintuitive, not majorly customizable and restrictive on storage (something which cripples VLE use IMO)

[cookie_monster]

We used Uniservity for a few years and It was ok, we're now with RM Kaleidos and I've yet to talk to a member of staff that likes it most of them loath it as far as I can tell. Both of them seem to be poor on storage and the students hate them both. They simply aren't designed to appeal to students, they really need to focus on features that will get students involved. I think a facebook style area with a private wall feature where they can put posts on requesting help from staff would be great and would provide a history of help that staff have provided that they can refer back too.

 

Anyway back on thread most of the staff here would like to go back to uniservity.

[lew_bob]

We use it,..

 

just don't though would be my recommendation. We are currently looking else were for a system that appeals to the teachers and students alike. We recently found one good point about uniservity and that is the quiz/survey system is quite good. Unfortunatly you still regulary get timeouts and during a recent survey I have had to deal with a number of users who are having to constently refresh due to 'uniservity has encountered an error please refresh'.

 

Using basic html and creativity with the custom and hidden folders you can create some nice looking pages but this is somewhat more for the advanced user and require some nice graphics, being a photoshop power user the graphics part was easy for myself. The general over simplification of the system as a whole however I've found is enough to drive not only me (techie) but the teachers insane.

 

As a basic, basic system its not too bad depending on what you wish to do. Just dont expect anything amazing and certainly dont expect it to be quick,.. with one class using it for revision I must have nearly cut off suffolk from the www as the schools connection dropped to pre 14.4 days

[matt40k]

We switched to it from Digitalbrain. It seems to be a big improvement.

 

Don't remind me of my days repairing staff DB mailboxs, thank god no-one used anything but the POP3 email. That was bad enough.

[lew_bob]

Oh I should comment that we are a high school for context. IMO uniservitity isnt suited well to high schools or larger lower schools.

[pmp4]

The majority of the schools in Brighton are using it.

 

We find it highly customisable, great tools and it is suitable for both Primary and Secondary schools. The teachers are able to use the site quickly compared to some others products they have worked with. The features are constantly updated and Univservity hold regional user forums which are free to attend. They have proved very useful, especially when you get to meet teachers from other schools who have some great ideas. The training and support has also been good. Most importantly the kids love it!

[Soulfish]

It's been rolled out here in East Sussex by our LEA a year ago. We still haven't got anyone using it properly, and found it to be a pain to administer, clunky and just not that great in general. Coupled with just how slow it can get and it just isn't a workable solution for us.

 

We're now in the process of thinking/planning a move back to a inhouse Moodle install

[tideway]

We have been using UniServity since last June (08) - used Fronter before that and think.com before that!

 

I have posted examples of the cross curricular work we have been doing at http://www.learningplatforms.info if that's of any help.

 

I must admit that when we were choosing a learning platform / vle in school the starting point was not so much the technology as 'what do you want to do in terms of learning and how will the technology support this'.

 

Jim

[mattboot]

I've been using the Uniservity Learning Platform for a couple of years in Warrington, both in school, and running training for other schools as an AST, and I love it. Have a look atGrappenhall Heys Primary School ** The Year 4 teacher's page is particularly good. Teachers here love it, as there is a massive range of stuff that can be done. The projects available from Uniservity are spot on (I've just met one of my performance management targets through their collaborative projects, as I was put in touch with a Hong Kong Uniservity school to work with, and our Y4 children are now working together), and they cover objectives from YR to KS4

 

Once you understand the way it works, the uses of the tools are endless - we have kids in Reception using forums, talking with fictional characters, and my Y5 class have just been creating an alien world wiki. http://http://www.school-portal.co.uk/GroupRenderWiki.asp?GroupID=160407&ResourceId=2129118, in 1 lesson.

 

I've seen schools using it a range of ways, from hosting useful material to use at home, to allowing children to explore their learning paths in real personalised learning. Teachers take to it quickly, because it is not massively technical. What works best is having a coule of keen people to forge ahead. Trot along to the Uniservity user events, and you;ll see load of good ideas for the way it can be used with the children.

Edited May 7, 2009 by mattboot
Forgot to add a couple of things...

[Philby]

Chosen Uniservity and just starting the process. 1st Consultancy meeting soon. So far so good in tewrms of service. We are a secondary scholl. we liked the way the VLE can sit behind our website, looking identical to it. Single sign on in Worcestershire too.

[CyberNerd]

We've had Uniservity for 3 yrs, but pulled out because of it's poor feature set and lack of usability for secondary. We chose Moodle because it has better integration with Sims.net, active directory integration, more features, better reliability with large files (not over WAN) and staff prefered it. Edited May 7, 2009 by CyberNerd
spelling

[matt40k]

I've been using the Uniservity Learning Platform for a couple of years in Warrington, both in school, and running training for other schools as an AST, and I love it. Have a look atGrappenhall Heys Primary School ** The Year 4 teacher's page is particularly good. Teachers here love it, as there is a massive range of stuff that can be done. The projects available from Uniservity are spot on (I've just met one of my performance management targets through their collaborative projects, as I was put in touch with a Hong Kong Uniservity school to work with, and our Y4 children are now working together), and they cover objectives from YR to KS4

 

Once you understand the way it works, the uses of the tools are endless - we have kids in Reception using forums, talking with fictional characters, and my Y5 class have just been creating an alien world wiki. http://http://www.school-portal.co.uk/GroupRenderWiki.asp?GroupID=160407&ResourceId=2129118, in 1 lesson.

 

I've seen schools using it a range of ways, from hosting useful material to use at home, to allowing children to explore their learning paths in real personalised learning. Teachers take to it quickly, because it is not massively technical. What works best is having a coule of keen people to forge ahead. Trot along to the Uniservity user events, and you;ll see load of good ideas for the way it can be used with the children.

 

No spam protection then.

 

[rant]

Also, may just be me, but I like something that actually reads the rule book and follows it, ie uses valid HTML. Surely it looks bad when you're teaching (ok only really applys for secondaries) web design and you say about valid code when your own website\VLE doesn't obey the rules.

[/rant]

 

[invalid] Markup Validation of http://www.school-portal.co.uk/GroupHomePage.asp?GroupId=153269 - W3C Markup Validator

[CyberNerd]

[rant]

Also, may just be me, but I like something that actually reads the rule book and follows it, ie uses valid HTML. Surely it looks bad when you're teaching (ok only really applys for secondaries) web design and you say about valid code when your own website\VLE doesn't obey the rules.

[/rant]

 

Also it doesn't say very much for the programming skills of the uniservity team. If they can't get something as basic as this right then you have to wonder how bad the back end is.

(it's so bad that they are re-writing the entire back-end, or so they told us)

[sahmeepee]

Interesting that so many people have created brand new accounts to sing Uniservity's praises - it must be good!

[Soulfish]

Also it doesn't say very much for the programming skills of the uniservity team. If they can't get something as basic as this right then you have to wonder how bad the back end is.

(it's so bad that they are re-writing the entire back-end, or so they told us)

 

I have to say that after seeing the Uniservity technical presentation I was very unimpressed with their backend setup, and it did explain why it can be so slow to do anything with it.

[matt40k]

Also it doesn't say very much for the programming skills of the uniservity team. If they can't get something as basic as this right then you have to wonder how bad the back end is.

(it's so bad that they are re-writing the entire back-end, or so they told us)

 

I though someone here said they were going to use Moodle?

 

Interesting that so many people have created brand new accounts to

sing Uniservity's praises - it must be good!

 

Not that anyone here would say UniServity would do such a thing!!

[gwendes]

Interesting that so many people have created brand new accounts to sing Uniservity's praises - it must be good!

 

I did notice that/

 

We have it - staff don't like it and I don't think enough resources are on there to have even received feedback from students...

[Soulfish]

I though someone here said they were going to use Moodle?

 

From what I've heard you'll be able to imbed moodle into University but that's about it

[gwendes]

I though someone here said they were going to use Moodle?

 

I heard they're moving over to a Moodle framework.

 

Not that anyone here would say UniServity would do such a thing!!

 

What? I don't think any company would ever do anything like that...

 

LOL!

[TechMonkey]

I though someone here said they were going to use Moodle?

 

The moodle thing has been clarified. They are creating blocks/links/hooks/magic so other learning platforms can link into them and they can link into other platforms. They are not changing their platform. Well except for a grand roadmap they have for the future.

 

We were going to use it but had huge concerns about using an offsite platform for all our resources. This has been partly vindicated by an outage/slowdown of the internet over a few days that would have absolutley shafted us if we had everything external.

 

Having fiddled I would say it was all right, I can see primaries loving it if their teachers have the time to fill it in. Secondaries if they don't have the man power, time or inclination to fiddle with something to their liking may also benefit. But just about everything I saw could be done with sharepoint & add ons or through moodle, with the added benefit of having complete control of it.

[danIT]

Moodle + Uniservity post:

 

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/virtual-learning-platforms/29361-uniservity-moodle.html

[mattboot]

No spam protection then.

 

[rant]

Also, may just be me, but I like something that actually reads the rule book and follows it, ie uses valid HTML. Surely it looks bad when you're teaching (ok only really applys for secondaries) web design and you say about valid code when your own website\VLE doesn't obey the rules.

[/rant]

 

[invalid] Markup Validation of http://www.school-portal.co.uk/GroupHomePage.asp?GroupId=153269 - W3C Markup Validator

 

Any focus on issues regarding html is the tiniest of details. The point is that the vast majority of any learning platform users are teachers, of all subjects, not just ICT. A learning platform is not intended as a discrete ICT tool, but as a teaching and learning tool across the entire curriculum. That's why the teachers I've worked with love the blogs, wikis, forums etc that are built into the system. If you wish to fiddle with html, there are tools that you can use to teach it.

 

A learning platform is for learning in all areas. That's why the simple approach works so well in this case, and that's why the more techically adept don't like it, as it isn't what they're used to. It isn't intended to be, and its not necessarily aimed at the secondary ICT technicians. The market for this is teachers who want a really useful tool to use in the classroom.

[matt40k]

Any focus on issues regarding html is the tiniest of details. The point is that the vast majority of any learning platform users are teachers, of all subjects, not just ICT. A learning platform is not intended as a discrete ICT tool, but as a teaching and learning tool across the entire curriculum. That's why the teachers I've worked with love the blogs, wikis, forums etc that are built into the system. If you wish to fiddle with html, there are tools that you can use to teach it.

 

A learning platform is for learning in all areas. That's why the simple approach works so well in this case, and that's why the more techically adept don't like it, as it isn't what they're used to. It isn't intended to be, and its not necessarily aimed at the secondary ICT technicians. The market for this is teachers who want a really useful tool to use in the classroom.

 

Sorry, I still don't accept it as a valid answer. Wordpress can make a simple easy blogging tool which is XHTML valid. Moodle can make a simple easy tool that the end product is valid code. The list goes on.