I don’t know what the week before semester was like for you? Here in the Digital Education Unit, in the College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Science (MVLS), it was a week of early mornings and late nights in the office. We were busily preparing our distance learners for the start of their online courses, commencing the following week. We were in the office early in the morning and well into the evening, so we could cover live sessions, in various different time zones. We had the great experience of welcoming students to the University from their homes and workplaces in countries such as Hong Kong, Switzerland, Sri Lanka, Jordan, as well as some from the UK.
We created an induction course for students, to welcome them to the University and to familiarise them with the technologies they will be using as part of their online courses.We ran sessions via Skype and BigBlueButton, so that the students would be up and running with these technologies for the start of their Masters courses. It can be pretty challenging trying to work out how to fix a problem such as a student’s computer audio not working, especially when they are located in a country on the other side of the world. It’s not an option to just give up. We want our students to have a really positive first experience of the University.
One of their first tasks was to post an introduction into a discussion forum. Dr Jo-Anne Murray provided a great start to the forum explaining her role as Associate Dean for Digital Education in MVLS and also that she has 2 kids, 2 dogs and 3 horses – this really set the tone for useful, friendly discussions.
The students also provided us with feedback at the end of the course; we’ve got some tweaks to make, for next time it runs, but many had a really positive experience. We hope that it made a great start to their online course with us.
Here is a screenshot of our Glasgow Global Campus in Second Life, where we also met the students during the Induction week. It’s an aerial view of the campus we have built (my avatar is flying in Second Life), including the Wolfson Medical building and Gilbert Scott building.
Great post, Jenny! I was lucky to have the opportunity to observe one of your sessions in SecondLife and had a chat with two of your students. What struck me was how keen our learners are to engage with online learning, and also how pleased they are to be taking online courses led by teaching staff who have a reputation of really caring about their students and their learning. We look forward to hearing more about MVLS distance learners experiences.