Author: Christine Sinclair

Happy New Academic Year

Postcards2CardsNewYearsResolution1915It’s great to be back!  And to those who’ve just joined us, it’s good to see you.  We hope you’re finding your way around your course sites and the Hub – and other spaces such as Twitter, where you’ll find existing students and alumni offering advice.  Thanks to all who’ve done that already.

it’s a hard job following in Jen’s footsteps. She has been a fantastic programme director for the past three years as many people have already observed.  She’s been a great help to me over this summer as I began to take over the role. It’s an interesting time to be programme director as the programme is 10 years old this year (more about this later).  And 9 years ago, in another life, I started as a student on IDEL myself. A lot has changed since then, but it remains a fabulous community of students, teachers, alumni and friends of the programme.  I hope you all enjoy your studies as much as I did!

Remember to keep checking into the Hub as there’ll be more announcements coming and lots of new ideas.  I’m sure that 2015-16 is going to be a year to remember.

Christine

Image: New Year’s resolution 1915.  Wikimedia Commons

Welcome (back) to the Digital Education Hub

Hello everyone – we hope you’ve had a good break.

We’re all looking forward to our new academic session which begins on 21 September. A special welcome to the new students who are starting then; do enjoy exploring the Hub and finding out about some of our activities here.  Log in with EASE to get full access to the site, including some of the links on the left.

The links to the Courses will be updated on 14 September, which we regard as the start of our orientation week.  You should be able to get access then to any you have signed up for.  For continuing students, if you still haven’t signed up, you should do that as soon as possible in the MSc in Digital Education Moodle site – or follow the link to Course Enrolment form in the left-hand column.  Course Design for Digital Environments is now fully subscribed. In the meantime, you might want to check out the handbooks for your courses, the Programme Handbook, and The Technologies Guide which have all been updated.

The Student-Staff Liaison Committee will meet in a few weeks – if you click on this link, you can see who is on the Committee and use the Discussion Forum to pass on messages.  More will be added to this soon.

We use this space to make announcements, tell you about interesting events, pass on messages. You can use it too.  See ‘Blog posting area for the Hub’.  There is guidance on how to do this in the Technologies Guide.

Happy September – and see you soon.

september-706937_1280
CC0  Pixabay

Snapshots

We’ve been asked to circulate this information about Snapshots – an initiative for Open and Distance Learning (ODL) students across the University. There are over 2,400 ODL students, but we thought Digital Education students might be especially interested in supporting this.

 

 

Here’s how the organisers have described the project:

We wish to capture a snapshot in time of Online Distance Learning and the people that make up the community – you, the students! This is your chance to introduce yourself while explaining what led you to the path of Online Learning and what it means for you to be an Online Distance student. We’d love for you to get involved and leave a mark on your University.

Instead of just giving you an online form, we would like to hear from you directly. Simply send in your unique ‘Snapshot’ – an audio recording of you speaking, along with an optional photo from where you are studying. Your Snapshot will be shown alongside Snapshots from other ODL students for all to enjoy and share

  • The project is open to students enrolled at any stage of their online study
  • It’s Quick – It can take just a few minutes to create and upload your Snapshot (less than 60 seconds for your audio would be perfect)
  • It’s Simple – You can do it through the website from your computer, phone or tablet
  • Snapshots will be kept anonymous

 

Tell us what you think! Our new Student-Staff Liaison Committee

group-413973_1280The newly-formed Student-Staff Liaison Committee (SSLC) for the MSc in Digital Education will have its first meeting on 16 March. Broadly speaking, the aim of this committee is to ensure that the student voice is heard on issues that affect their educational experience.  Ours will be one of many SSLCs across the University, but we can ensure that it meets our own needs as a fully online programme.  In the University’s guidelines, there is a useful set of principles highlighting governance, decision making, quality enhancement and assurance. We shall be formulating our own terms of reference, but they will be in keeping with these principles.

For the MSc in Digital Education, our SSLC membership consists of 8 student reps, 3 academic staff, and our administrator.  To see who we are – and to raise any issues you want us to consider – go to our section in the MSc in Digital Education Moodle space. This space will be changing over the next few weeks as we add further information about ourselves and our aims. But you can contribute to the discussion forum now.