Queen Margaret University
MSc in Professional and Higher Education
This case study is from a completely online postgraduate programme for teaching professionals who may be based anywhere in the world. Key to creating a sense of belonging on this programme has been the high levels of interactivity that are built into all parts of the programme, beginning with an induction module that all students complete prior to enrolment. Students work in pairs and in groups to complete learning tasks as part of all of their modules, all of which can contribute to portfolio summative assessments.
Contributors: Dr Susi Peacock and Dr Lindesay Irvine
6. Recommendations
The key elements to delivering a successful online programme such as this are:
- Getting students online as a priority- making sure that there is an easy registration process
- Providing engaging activities that have relevance to students’ work or learning
- Including lots of group activities
- Providing a thorough induction
- Structuring the programme and giving clear guidance of what students need to do and when (clear language is very important here)
- Using the activities to build up to the assessment; so the assessment is not an ‘add on’ to the course materials. This really helps to get student engagement.
- An online tutor presence is vital, but not OTT- give students the space to do the work!
- Not overloading students with content. As a lot more scaffolding and signposting has to be done with online students it’s usually inappropriate to transfer material from a face to face programme into an online context.
- Making it clear that there are core and optional otherwise students think they have to do everything. It is helpful to think about what students need to know, what is nice to know etc. This should not result in dumbing down but engaging in deep learning about fewer topics.