While surprised, he was gratified that the students actually used his course material and he then carried on where he had left off the previous quarter. We received comments from faculty directly attributed higher course evaluations to their use of Classware. Some faculty reported a decreased use of Xeroxing. Concerned that we had offloaded Xeroxing costs onto the public labs, a check on the printing data showed no substantial increase as a result of using Classware. Students were either parsimonious in their printing or were printing at home.
Metric data is of little importance if it is never used.
We vowed early on to carefully monitor data we acquired to determine how to improve the product. This year, as the use began to skyrocket, we averaged six emails and three phone calls per day complaining about problems getting accounts activated. Starting in Winter quarter we will be introducing a new simplified process for students to get their accounts. This should reduce the problem levels to close to zero. Additionally, we are introducing tracking numbers to the students and faculty who are still having problems.