This week six Reading University students filled in questionnaires and took part in a discussion, over apple cake and hazelnut biscuits, about their use of online learning resources. Generally, they welcomed ideas for online learning resources such as digitised objects and associated documents, and recordings of museum staff speaking about their work. They saw the advantages as mainly logistical, for example the chance to revise work and also to access materials remotely and at times which fitted in with their working patterns. It was essential that they could see the relevance of such resources to course tasks and that they were easy to use.
They had views about both the pros and cons of online resources. Example of a pro: ‘some students are part-time or have to travel or want to work in the evenings-out of hours access to documents is a fantastic idea!!’; Example of a con: ‘there is a danger that [digitised objects and associated documents] might make things just “too easy” and stifle the need for greater personal research and the need to engage with the paper archive’.