Distance Stream finally up and running

Distance students now have access to their own Stream site through their Stream dashboard. The Massey @ Distance (M@D) Stream site officially launched on July 1, ready for over 13,000 students. The site is designed as a forum for online communication between students better suited to them over other methods that had been used up to that point. 

The first official announcement for the service was in April but the final release was delayed until July to give Massey more time to complete things according to M@D Co-Presidents, Jacalyn Clare and Jax Watt. 

Distance student Hamish thinks a resource like this has been a long time coming. 

“From what [I’ve] seen, [it] seems to have a good amount of content as Distance students need. Seems to show in a good flow what resources we can use and what’s available to us. The only issue I found with it is that it seems to be a bit too wordy in some places on the page.”  

While this is a big step forward in improving online accessibility for Distance students, upgrades will still be a while coming for M@D’s actual website according to the co-presidents. “We had been waiting to see what happened with SLA negotiations, to see if there could be alignment of any services (including graphic artists, web designers/developers, web providers, etc.,) to get a new website,” they said. They admit they dislike the website and are aware it is not popular among students either, promising to have it changed before the end of their term. “We know the website looks bad and is the bane of our existence and we want it changed ASAP, but we also want to do it right on the first try,” they said.