Old fashioned and unresponsive platform with many issues

I usually do not complain about products and services but in the case of IMM where we pay such a high amount of money and not have the appropriate support in place requires a review. The most important reason why I am writing on this platform is that is is very challenging to get decent responses or support from the team. I appreciate that their jobs of dealing with queries is not easy and I would also appreciate that they have an understanding of the level of stress that we are dealing with to multitask demanding careers, family responsibilities spend so much of time with multiple assignments and exams at once. Lauren was helpful last year and I have tried to escalate my issues to her this time with no success. When you call the head office, they say that you should send e-mails. Please appreciate that COVID requires business transformation and flexibility. The team need cellphones on which they can be contacted

Here’s my specific issues 1) why is there a specific referencing guide when we could use any one of the built in options available on word or apps that are used on the internet, even MBA students in other institutes are using Harvard referencing build into word. Checking and correcting the references alone on my last assignment took me one hour - this is time that could have been spent on strengthening our assignments in the areas in which we get feedback. We are losing valuable marks that will either mean a distinction or a pass because we are being penalised on full stops. In the day of digital transformation, computers should be doing this.

2) There is big disorganisation relating to the lecture times and dates. There is no standardised approach Ito how this is communicated to the students. There is a student pacer which is a timetable for the module. why can’t the lecture times be included there? Why can’t the lecturers send a meeting invitation link that is entered into our calendars? Some of the online calendars are updated and some are not -why is this? Note that I missed a very crucial masterclass as I didn’t receive the email that the lecture was happening. I spoke to the another student that had the same experience.

3) I saw somewhere that the turn around support time is 1 hour but it takes ages to get a response when we phone, the standard response is to email help me. This is South Africa, people want human interaction and to talk to someone when there is an issue

4) Why is one exam 5 hours and another 4:45 mins. As a leading learning institute in the country, you need standardised approaches. How long does it take a person on average to complete an exam in a face to face environment vs. Online? If English is your first language, it’s pretty easy to get spelling correct. But when you type fast, you make many mistakes on selecting the wrong key. As much as online has many advantages - it does require more time to do a spell check, formatting, scroll up and down and from one tab to another. Especially spell check requires at least 5 mins per question. Forget about requesting bold and underline- there’s no tile for that in a fast exam. Anyone who follows the experience journey of completing the paper physically vs. Online would be able to see for themselves. This is something you need to consider changing for future. Those extra 15 minutes makes a lot of difference and even cut down the questions for digital vs. Face to face There are some questions where I could not even see the mark allocation clearly, I just started typing as I didn’t want to waste time.

5) My biggest issue is the elearn platform. I appreciate the modifications from 2020, however the unresponsiveness and design of an incapable platform is causing us marks that either means a distinction or a pass. Last year, I queried this issue and I didn’t get a satisfactory response. I easily accepted my mark as I didn’t have the energy to argue with the IMM team who sounded exhausted and frustrated. Unfortunately, this year I cannot leave the issue. a) Once you submit the assignment, there is no save tab that is physically visible. Last week, when I tried to submit my project before midnight, I attached it but there was no save button. I woke up my husband who works in ITS to try and help and even he could not figure it out for more than a minute. Eventually as the timer hit midnight and I had nothing to lose, I started playing around until I found some button and that took me to a next screen and then the assignment was ‘submitted’. This was literally as the colour of the screen changed from green to red - probably less than 20 seconds however a comment showed up on screen that the assignment was 2 min late. The timer for the assignment submission is incorrect and needs to be corrected. I am a digital marketing manager who works in digital platforms for a living and can confirm that the site has technical issues. I will not accept being penalised for the late submission of my project last week. You can check by the turnitin in report that there was sufficient time to upload and save the assignment before midnight. b) In today’s exam, I had the most frustrating experience. After my disappointment of Monday’s assignment being late, I decided to do the practice for the exam on the platform. I tested everything and it looked easy to move from one tab (exam question) to the next and then back if you needed to. In actual exam, I quickly went through all the questions and decided that I will answer 1-4 first and then go to 6 as I wasn’t very confident about question 5 at all based on the time it would require for the content outcomes. With only 30 minutes left, I was till left with question 5 and 6. This was not an issue as I could have easily answered question 5 as I was well prepared and I have been doing no this in my 20 year career - it was easy and fast. However when I clicked on the tab to answer the question on the last tab, it was ‘locked’. I tried clicking again but I could not click on the tab. It wouldn’t allow me to answer the question. I tried going to the ediscussion forum to quickly write my issue but it was also disabled. I just thought that I would quickly go and get through questions 5 as fast as possible. Luckily I had taken a screenshot of question 6 and I saw after that it carried 20 marks. I know that I could have easily gotten approx 15 for this question. I am extremely upset about this, I tried calling the IMM immediately to talk to the tech team with no success. They asked me to send an email. Unfortunately, I will not accept failing this module based on the inadequacy of the platform and I would like a response immediately from the IMM senior team on the recommendations.

I would also like to know how to set up an appointment with the Dean to discuss my frustrations further.

I apologise for the method that I have taken to provide feedback but my could not let my third semester of disappointments go unheard especially with the amount of hours that I have spent away from my children and other responsibilities. We are continuously reminded by our lecturers that we need to take our studies seriously as we are post grad students and the standards are high. I would like to remind the IMM that as paying students, we expect the same.

In summary, I will not accept being penalised for late submission of assignment on 31 May as well as failing exam on 2nd June based on the poor design of the platform. I am happy to re-write any repeat exam or supp but I absolutely refuse to accept a failure after the hard work and long hours. Secondly, I would like acknowledgement that these issues will be addressed for future to prevent other students from experiencing the same.

Thank you