(388)AN ONLINE INDUCTION PROGRAMME: PREPARING DIVERSESTUDENTS FOR AN ONLINE MASTERS DEGREE

摘要

New undergraduate and postgraduate students at UK universities typically have aninduction programme for about a week immediately before the start of their courses. Thisfulfils a mixture of functions, administrative, social, and course-related. However,although this transition period is important in the integration of students, little researchhas been carried out into induction programmes. Moreover, most research that looks atthe integration of students into Higher Education focuses on first year undergraduates,but there are important challenges in relation to the integration of new postgraduatestudents who have been out of university for some time, especially when these studentsare undertaking an online distance learning course.Informal enquiries suggest that in contrast to the courses themselves, where learningoutcomes are typically specified in detail, the outcomes of induction programmes arerarely articulated, and the resulting student experience can be very varied in quality. Howcan we provide an appropriate induction programme for students who are returning toHigher Education to begin online postgraduate study?This paper discusses the induction programme for a new online master’s degree inHealth Communication Design. The students are typically in full time employment andstudying part-time, so the first requirement was for a “focussed induction” [1] with clearlydefined outcomes which would not be perceived by the students as wasting their time. Apriority for the course team was to use the induction period to familiarise students with thesoftware (Moodle and Wimba Live Classroom), and to trouble-shoot any technicalproblems before the start of the first module: this was a significant factor in our decisionto provide the induction programme online rather than face to face. The students hadwidely varying backgrounds and some had been out of education for many years, so afurther consideration was to ensure a common basic level of skills in online library useand referencing.This paper will discuss the aims of our online induction programme, the ways in which weset about achieving them, and how the induction programme worked in practice.