Hi everyone and welcome to the Academic Year 2017-18.
This is Week 0 or orientation week – when tutors and students all have an opportunity to check out the different sites and plans for the semester and sort out problems if there are any. It’s a chance to meet other people taking the same course and to say hello to our students who are new to the programme. We are still finalising the numbers of new students, but we have more than 30, and from many different countries. A very warm welcome to you all.
Your courses will open some time on Monday 11 September and you should be able to access them via the links on the left or directly from Moodle. Continuing students will see that the latest Moodle upgrade has given courses a slightly different look and feel. The Technologies Guide may help you to find your way around this and other spaces.
Our Research Methods course is now re-titled Introduction to social research methods. It is associated with a MOOC with the same name that starts in October – https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-social-research-methods-edinburghx-socrmx#. For our own students, this MOOC comprises the middle section of their course. However, the assignments and learning outcomes and tutorial support for our own students are the same as they always were. We are very excited about this development: a further example of opening up what we do.
As many of you will already know, Hamish Macleod has now retired and he is already greatly missed! However, he is still in touch with us and you may well see him around from time to time, so I have still included him in the Programme Handbook. You’ll find the current edition of the Programme Handbook in the Handbooks section of this site. It contains important information, whichever course you are taking.
Looking forward to catching up with everyone soon. Week 1 starts on 18 September – but people are Tweeting already #mscde (and see the course Twitter hashtags in the left hand column too).
Christine
Image: cc BY 2.0 Omar Reiss https://www.flickr.com/photos/bitesizeinspiration/8733889058
