One reflection I had on returning to study as a relatively young in the grand scheme of things mature age student is in the way that cloud apps have replaced and changed old ways of sharing and collaborating, and how habits formed over the course of 25 years of study are challenged by this. Even just habits of the last 10 years.

When I first landed at RMIT in 2005 everything was submitted in hard copy, printed, collated, dropped into a physical drop-box with a coversheet and was all in response to hard copy pre-formulated briefs circulated to you in class. When I returned in 2009 very little had changed on that front, however copies of assessment criteria were available online. When I returned again in 2014 everything was digital, submission was digital, readings were online, assessment criteria were online, but this was all largely centralised in one convenient location on Blackboard.

Now in 2016 decentralisation seems the flavour, course guides are in a blog, notes from lectures are posts in that blog, submissions are made in Google Drive folders, Assessment briefs are open documents in cloud you need a specific link to locate, while another class may be entirely on Blackboard and another partly on blackboard and partly hosted on Lectopia all of which require different log in details, it’s all a bit hard to keep track of at times. I have to say at times I feel like I’m now spending more time looking for course content than it takes to read some of it, and often feel like I’m at a loss for where the information I need is located.

Perhaps it’s nostalgic to long for the days just 2 years ago when it was all located centrally and hosted on RMITs space where you administer the rest of your education, or maybe there’s an issue here that some Human Centered Design could solve? Is anyone else in the Bach Comms. Media course feeling the occasional bout of confusion when trying to keep across all the course requirements scattered across various platforms? Does anyone have any tips for keeping your feet on the ground when all your head is in the clouds?