The University of South Africa (Unisa) has released a statement about its myUnisa / myModules student portal which has experienced significant problems and downtime over the last few weeks.

Due to the fact that this portal is used for students to submit assignments, access study material and various other important functions, it has caused a huge hassle for both students and staff at the university.

“The University implemented the new learning management system with the hope of resolving the then existing challenges it had with its old system. This was done to introduce new dynamic ways of teaching that ensure optimal engagement with students thereby contributing towards their success. While the new system was stressed tested to afford the University confidence in its optimal performance, we are now faced with challenges associated with new system implementations. The frustrations felt by students and academics, due to the unstable system performance, are well understood and recognised. The project team expresses its sincere regret and profusely apologises for the current situation,” Unisa’s statement reads.

Unisa announced back in January that it would incorporate Moodle, an open source learning platform, into its own student portal. While not mentioned by name it seems that this is the aforementioned “new learning management system” that is causing so many problems.

Due to the fact that not submitting important assignments can lead to the immediate failure of a student’s module at Unisa, a blanket extension has been granted to first semester assignment dates but these will be staggered.

Funnily enough these new dates will be communicated through myModules. You’d think announcing important information about problems caused by a platform, on said platform, wouldn’t be the best idea, but Unisa asserts that the dates will appear when myModules is fully operational.

Finally Unisa apologises for the inconvenience caused by all this and provides a list of considerations that have been taken into account going forward which also contributed to the decision to extend due dates:

1. We acknowledged that students may not have had access to their study material leading up to their assignment submission; 
2. Some students do not have access to their module sites due to late registration; 
3. Certain assignments are fully online, and students were not able to complete their assignments offline; and 
4. Some students were not able to submit complete responses as their connectivity was interrupted.