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Students clue up in advance via social networking
Ruth Harrison-Palmer and James Burch from the Faculty of Education have been using online technology to prepare students for their study before they arrive at university, an idea that originated from student Nick Gay.
The development has involved 2010/11 cohorts of the Primary and Secondary PGCE programmes. Future students have had access to resources and opportunities that help them to both frame their expectations for study, and to give them the chance to meet one another online prior to the start of their course.
A blend of technologies that includes Blackboard, the PebblePad ePortfolio system and a social network site have been used. Students have been able to view course information, read example assessments, complete subject knowledge self-audits and introduce one another online. Ruth described what the approach has enabled: “The pre-course information has helped students to know what they were coming in to. We have been able to share the philosophy of the programme, what assessments they would be doing and what the assignments would look like. All of those things have helped people prepare for their study on the course.”
Providing access to an online social space has proven to be beneficial to students who have used the environment to organise car shares, find student accommodation and arrange social events. And the online socialisation has transferred to the classroom: “The students had already met other people before they started. They weren’t as apprehensive or anxious about starting the programme because they weren’t coming without knowing anyone. They felt like they already knew people on the programme and I noticed that as a cohort they seemed settled very quickly. We are hopeful that the provision of this pre-course activity may help to promote retention in the long term.”
The project has revealed some interesting benefits around the use of social media to support learning, and there are further plans to use a similar approach to encourage communication between students out on work placements.
Similar developments that investigate the use of technology to support student transitions into HE suggest that nurturing realistic student expectations for their future study can improve first-year retention. In another project the university is applying experiences from the sector to pilot the use of an open social network site called Captcha. Simon Allan, Lecturer in Academic Development in CDEPP, explained: “Captcha is an opportunity for staff and students to use the power of social media to support learning and teaching. This is readily available technology and we need to think about how it can be harnessed along with other university technologies that we have at our disposal. So it is useful to have a platform from which people can innovate.”
If you would like to know more about these developments please contact Ruth Harrison-Palmer (ruth.harrison-palmer@
cumbria.ac.uk) or Simon Allan (simon.
allan@cumbria.ac.uk).
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