I know you all visit, and I know what search terms in google and yahoo etc bring you here. I check the site logs quite often and we get like 50+ unique visitors each and every day. Sometimes more than 100.

Please let us know what we are lacking and what would encourage you to join in with our forum.

Perhaps we need a more friendly staff member. I'm thinking if the member Karla comes back she would make an ideal forum administrator. Karla, if you read this please PM me if you would be interested in becoming an admin.

Many thanks

Jim,

The problem I had was that the search terms I was using led me to a page that displayed ONLY the "welcome lounge" and "feedback and suggestions".

(viewforum.php?f=844)

Other searches brought up the "General Discussion", "Regional Centre Discussion Forums", "Careers", "Student Finance" and "Course Materials" sub-sections.

(viewforum.php?f=846)

If you Google "ouforum w100", for example, f=846 and f=844 are the first two hit returns.

I actually found the rest of the forum outlining the level one, two and three courses by accident today after Googling "W201".

So, that's point one.

Point two is that it's incredibly hard to get a new forum off the ground and, it's probably fair to say, many OU enrollees aren't overly computer literate.

So, you click on your chosen subject - W100 in my case - to find no posts.

So, no-one to answer your questions = continue Googling.

The obvious answer to encouraging those who do manage to navigate their way to the forum to join up is to have an admin/mod for each thread who can add in info that may provide answers.

For example, with regard to W200 and W201, I am trying to find out whether the exams are open or closed book, whether notes are allowed, where the regional exam centres are, who the tutor for my area would be, what percentage of weighting the final exam carries and its duration, etc.

If the basics were within the W200 and W201 forums, I'd be highly likely to ask further questions - thereby bringing others in "from the sidelines" and, hey presto, a forum begins to grow...

With W200 and W201, the College of Law pages, the OpenLearn links, some course notes from the tutors' home pages, etc (all freely available info) could be pasted to establish a singular link providing information.

I ended up on a regional tutor's home pages for W300 yesterday - which provided useful insight into the realities of the course, and gave some links I didn't even know existed - to all the House of Lords appeals since 1996 - the full, unedited observations and submissions of the Lords and justices, as opposed to the sometimes confusing synopses found in law books.

That link should be in every law forum for starters.

If that sits okay with you, I can start collating W100, W200, W201, W300 and W301 assembled from around the 'net into the forum pages.

If others studying other courses all did the same... it'd kick-start this forum overall into a self-perpetuating entity.

Keith

Hi Keith,

With the google results thing there is not much I can do except change forum software to be more SEO friendly, which costs a wee bit. Might be worth it if the forums pick up.

It would be greatly appreciated if you collated the info on the law courses. Would you also be interested in the admin of these sections? I know I can't make this site work efficiently myself so all help would be humbly accepted

Jim

I didn't know about this site, until I logged into one of the forums on fc

Hi Jim,

I'd be happy to help out - I moderate for a few boards unrelated to academia or the OU.

I have a load of relevant links which can be posted to get the W100, W200, W201, W300 and W301 forums underway.

Regards,

Keith

Hi Keith,

I really appreciate the help. I've changed your forum permissions. Feel free to change anything you think will make this site better

Jim

Hmm, that could be a dangerous thing...
I'll get a few dozen links up on W100 first, then carry them across the other W threads.
Keith

What about those that are here and use FC putting a link on our FC signature?

I've finally gotten around to addressing point one. It was the seo of the previous software we used. It has taken many hours of work, but now the search engines will find topic forum and subject titles instead of some random numbers

It will take a few weeks for google and yahoo and msn etc to adjust their search results, but the positive search returns SHOULD result in a higher registration rate.

We are 2 away from 100 members now. Not bad for no advertising All our traffic is organic search results. According to the stats, most folks are searching for the course code or course name (quite a lot of folks searching for TMA samples too LOL, but I won't post specifics here, I don't condone plagiarism )

I hope you hard working open university students appreciate my efforts and sign up for our little community here