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3.2 Online tutorials

Online tutorials will take place in our online rooms, using software called Adobe Connect. You can think of these as virtual meeting rooms, where you can talk (by voice or text) to other students and tutors, and see material shared by the tutor, have a go at online polls, contribute your thoughts and ideas in discussions and sometimes work in small groups with other students.

The functions in Adobe Connect and the way you’ll book onto tutorials will be the same for each module.

Many modules will record tutorials just in case you’re unable to attend any of the options, or if you want to revisit them later to help refresh your memory or when you are revising. You’ll find information on your module website about how to access these recordings.

It’s always better to attend tutorials live if you possibly can. You learn most when you’re actively engaging with what’s going on – and that is much easier to do when there are other students and your tutor in there with you at the same time. Being able to ask questions and join in makes a lot of difference!

If you’re only able to use a recording, then you can still try to ‘join in’ as far as possible – when the students in the tutorial are asked to answer a question, have a go at it too (try pausing it while you think). Likewise, if there’s a discussion, have a think what your view would be before reading or listening to what other people have said. If there’s a presentation, think what questions you might like to ask, and get in touch with your tutor to ask them if they’re not covered in the recording.

In the following video, two students talk about what it’s like to take part in an online tutorial.

Download this video clip.Video player: bous_1_s4_onlinetutorials.mp4
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Interactive feature not available in single page view (see it in standard view).

You can start to get familiar with Adobe Connect in the next activity.

Activity 1 Using Adobe Connect

Timing: Allow about 10 minutes

While Adobe Connect is fairly intuitive, it’s useful to be familiar with it before your first tutorial.

You may find that there are demonstration tutorials at the start of your first module, so look out for these, but for now take a look at the Computing Guide [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] .

Once you’re in the Computing Guide you’ll see a heading part way down the page called ‘Tutorials (Online rooms)’ and under this there is a link to the guidance for using Adobe Connect.

Described image
Figure 5 Online tutorials

Take a look at the links under ‘User information’ (the information for hosts is for your tutor). You might want to save a link to this page in case you do have any problems using Adobe Connect.

Described image
Figure 6 Adobe Connect guidance