Suresh

MyEd Start Page

The main elearning portal for the University of Edinburgh is easy enough to find. It's clean looking and straightforward. Not likely to win any design awards but shouldn't cause any offence either. Suresh recognises the usual collection of links to assist users with problems logging in etc. It's what you would expect to find here and would probably be useful for other users.

The main button that you need to use to gain access is pretty obvious. After all the word "login" is repeated three times.

EASE

This takes Suresh to the actual log in page. Suresh wonders why this needs to be on a separate page. Do people log in to other things apart from MyEd using EASE?

There's nothing to do here except log in.
Or is there?

Why the outline typeface? Are these links? If Suresh hovers over the text he sees they are. The language is pretty mixed up as well. "Click Here" and a series of questions, hmmm...

MyEd Main Page

Suresh logs in and gets the MyEd Main Page.
There's a lot of stuff here but it's laid out like you would expect a fairly conventional web environment to appear. Remembering he's come to sort out his schedule he sees a timetable tab in the main menu and clicks it.

Timetable

His timetable looks a bit empty. But wait, this is a pilot scheme and there's a warning that the info may not be accurate. Looks like he's not in the scheme. Why did he have this tab in his MyEd if it was of no use? There's a request for feedback. If he had more time he'd love to provide some.
Back to the main page then.

Nothing else says anything like "timetable" on the main page. Maybe there's something under one of the other tabs. Now which one would it be?
If his timetable is not under the "Timetable" tab could it be part of "myStuff", "myServices", "Search & Info" or "Studies"?

Studies Page

Suresh arrives at the "Studies" page. On the way he wonders if these are "myStudies" or everyone's? If they are specific to him, as it appears, then why not add the "my"?
He finds the courses he's enrolled on and some intriguing panels in the bottom right of the page.

What's going on here?
Suresh is an IT professional and he's never heard of these.
But he knows he's not going to break anything by taking a look.
Could it be that "Timetab" is actually his timetable cunningly disguised as insomnia medication?

Looks promising... sort of.
It's about constructing a timetable (might be hard work) and it looks like it might give you the time and location of one event only. Either that or the events are graded according to quality - first class.
There are lots of warnings on the page about how difficult this process could be. But Suresh notices that the most recent date on the Comments link is October 2004 so maybe it's not so difficult three years later.
He selects the "PG Years" link (sounds like a look back at the teen cinema of the Nineties).

Woah! This looks complicated.
What is Suresh outputting? He presumes it's a timetable but why does it have a title and code search there and not on what appears to be the input side?
He begins by trying to find his course, that should be straightforward. He selects the "Subject" radio button and clicks on the list.

Good grief!
A huge, only partially alphabetical, list which includes four identical subjects called "Postgraduate", that starts with "Accounting" and ends with "Archaeology" and has "Education (Old Curriculum)" as the only thing close to what Suresh is looking for.
He'll be more careful about clicking on lists in future.

Suresh notices that in the window, under the radio buttons and drop down lists, there is an "Available Courses" list. This is also long and, as he finds out, list modules not whole programmes.
But he does find his current module and clicks on it.

Somehow the outcome doesn't come as a surprise.
He has wasted his time but has learned a valuable lesson. He won't be spending time with MyEd again. It seems to be made up of IT experiements and information that isn't of any use to him. What might be of use is so poorly maintained as to make it useless. In future he'll stick with using it just to get access to WebCT.