Before the course starts

Before the course starts, it can be helpful to familiarise your students with the methods of online communication that will be used and your expectations (e.g. rules of discussion boards; engagement in tutorials). This will help build your students' confidence and enable them to feel comfortable in utilising the online environment.

Online Induction Tutorials and Introduction Videos

Having an online induction tutorial allows you to introduce yourself to your students in advance of the unit starting. This can help to familiarise students with you, the virtual learning environment (VLE) and where course materials are before teaching starts. They can also be used to highlight how to navigate Blackboard and how to access online resources. In addition, they can help students to start to build confidence with using applications such as Blackboard Collaborate or Zoom in advance of scheduled teaching.

This video provides an example of an online induction that was used in the PGCert Medical and Healthcare Education. This video is a short edited version of a 60 minute tutorial displaying some key parts to help illustrate this approach. In this video you can see how the educators introduced themselves and how the study advisor ran through how to navigate the course. This helps educators to begin to build their presence as well as helping students become familiar with the course content.

Induction tutorials require a synchronous approach. An alternate asynchronous approach is to record an online introduction video. This can have very similar content to an induction tutorial such that it can allow you to introduce yourself, as well as to highlight course content areas and how you will be interacting with your students (e.g. regular tutorials, reading posts and commenting on discussion boards etc). This also can have the advantage of being reusable for future runs of the course.