Arbor Student App

Arbor. First thing that comes to my head when that word is procured is an iron rod piercing through my skull. I despise this clunky, poorly made app more than anything that God Himself may create. And why? I felt lobotomized when doing my first log-in. Months later, I still feel lobotomized. For the 67th trillionth time, I’ve been asked to accept their terms & conditions. And after making the bold decision for my thumb to smack against that ‘accept’ button - they have the AUDACITY, to not allow me to use their app? Hey, I want to check what’s on my timetable. Can’t even do that. Fine, allow me to indulge and see what homeworks I’ve been set. Nope. Just have me stuck on a screen with those pungent green circles, spinning forever. And about homeworks - 90% of the time, I can’t even submit them. There is no button to do so, so why does it say I have 676 tasks overdue? Oh wait - There isn’t anyway to submit them. A polar opposite to arbor, is the graceful EduLink. A creation so perfect, so taintless of sin unlike arbor. EduLink is Batman, and Arbor is the Joker. I could go on for the rest of my life, praising EduLink as the deity it is, which once emitted with divinity only equivalent to God. But seriously. Arbor is a joke.

Arbor is by far one of the worst apps I have used. My school switched to arbor near the end of last year and there have been too many issues to count. 1) It is basically impossible to submit any kind of homework as completed, so you are forced to get missed deadlines (just on the app) and the only way teachers can know if you’ve done the homework is if you bring it by person, which means there might as well not be any sort of submission feature. 2) The layout of Arbor looks clunky and rushed, only being just a few sectors of blocky, white information tabs, all being done to bare minimum. 3) Logging into Arbor is unnecessarily difficult as there isn’t any signing in feature ( to my knowledge) and your password gets reset every 180 days, forcing you to have to repeat the entire logging in process again. Also, Arbor may just, randomly log you out for zero reason and bar you from your timetable, which can cause you to get late marks and maybe even behaviour points. Arbor just feels like a cash grab with zero effort put in and no care for the people that are using it. If you need a educational online system, choose Edulink instead.

As a student using this app I find the layout confusing and messy and it is hard to navigate. Our school recently changed from ClassCharts to Arbor, an unreasonable decision. Firstly, the assignments say ‘waiting for student to submit’ however students cannot submit the homework and if the teachers don’t submit it, it becomes cluttered. Furthermore, students cannot tick off completed assignments, making it less manageable and gives students less control over their work. Due to this, many students miss homework. Secondly, behavioural points are distributed across a timeline laid out like a maze. This makes the good ones less rewarding. The points are not shown as a ratio, or compared with good and bad which makes students care less. It is also labelled as behaviour, which in some instances doesn’t make sense. For example, if a student forgets a book, it is not intended bad behaviour and therefore shouldn’t be marked as that. Thirdly, Arbor AI is an unnecessary feature that is incapable of answering simple questions. And finally, the layout is unbearable. The four pages are along the bottom of the page as well as when you press on the three lines on the top, this is unnecessary. The pages should be in order of priority, with homework first. The timetable should only span the time of the school day not 24 hours and weekly view should be available. Another issue a lot of students are facing is that on phones, links are often unavailable and this is a major inconvenience. Kind regards.