The Learning Matters Podcast captures insights into, experiences of, and conversations around education at the University of Sussex. The podcast is hosted by Prof Wendy Garnham and Dr Heather Taylor. It is recorded monthly, and each month is centred around a particular theme. The theme of our ninth episode is ‘inclusive online distance learning’ and we hear from Sarah Ison and Brena Collyer De Aguiar.
Recording
Listen to the recording of Episode 9 on Spotify
Transcript
Wendy Garnham: Welcome to the Learning Matters podcast from the University of Sussex, where we capture insights, experiences, and conversations around education at our institution and beyond. Our theme for this episode is supporting Online Distance Learning, and our guests are Sarah Ison, Librarian for Online Distance Learning at the University of Sussex, and Brena Collyer De Aguiar, Senior Learning Technologist for Online Distance Learning. Our names are Wendy Garnham and Heather Taylor, and we are your presenters today. Welcome, everyone.
Sarah Ison: Hello.
Brena Collyer De Aguiar: Hello. Hi.
Wendy Garnham: Today, we’ll be discussing how Brena and Sarah support online distance learners, the challenges and opportunities of teaching in a global online environment, and what lessons we can take from Online Distance Learning (ODL) into wider teaching practice at Sussex and across the sector.
Heather Taylor: So, Brena, to start us off, could you tell us a bit about Online Distance Learning at Sussex and your individual role within the Online Distance Learning team?
Brena Collyer De Aguiar: Yeah. So we have a number of master’s online courses, and also the PG cert. So they are 100% online courses. My role is I’m an Online Distance Learning Senior Learning Technologist. And I’m mainly responsible for liaising with academics around course development. So when they develop the courses and the modules, supporting them with academic, with assessment and pedagogic advice and design as well, you know, on trying to promote innovative learning experiences. I’m responsible for designing the academic training, so the essential training they have to attend when they are involved in ODL. And I also do a lot of reviews in terms of accessibility and make sure our courses are accessible.
Heather Taylor: So, Sarah, same question to you then. Can you tell us a bit about your role in the Online Distance Learning team at Sussex?
Sarah Ison: Sure. So I’m the Online Distance Learning Librarian, and I’m dedicated to supporting students with their information literacy, their research skills, referencing, and helping them to avoid academic misconduct, hopefully. And I offer one-to-one sessions with students that want a little bit more support tailored to whatever they’re working on. And I provide recorded sessions and live sessions throughout their module so they have a chance to drop into like a session just to ask questions or come to my kind of launch session, which gives an overview of the way in which I can help support them. And so I could also support academic staff if they’re developing new modules, help them get their reading list together, and have some colleagues based in the library who actually get the reading lists embedded in Canvas and make sure that they’re working. And I also sometimes run bespoke sessions within a module on the request of the academic just to tailor something specific in specifically or at a certain point in the module to help really encourage the students to think about something in particular that relates to my remit. So, you know, library skills, information seeking, finding scholarly material, that sort of thing.
Wendy Garnham (03:18): You work with a diverse global cohort of students, many of whom are international or mature learners, sort of balancing work and life commitments and coming from a range of cultural backgrounds. How do your roles help foster a sense of community and belonging among students who are studying remotely, often across different time zones or cultures and age groups?
Sarah Ison: So I teach kind of once a module. I offer a session to all new students, whatever subject they’re studying. I try to schedule it in the middle of the day to sort of meet whatever time zone they’re in. Obviously, that is quite challenging, and it’s an opportunity for students to come across each other, just in terms of at the start of a session, they’re quite informal. And I encourage them to put in the chat where they’re from, what’s the weather like, how are they feeling? Put an emoji and kind of reflect how you’re feeling at that moment in time. Just a couple of minutes at the start to just kind of do a little icebreaker, and just try and make it a friendly space, really, where people can ask questions throughout. They can either raise their hand formally in Zoom or they can just unmute and throw out a question or put it in the chat. And, yeah, I just try and make myself kind of really approachable so students feel comfortable to ask questions as we go along or follow up with a one-to-one if they need. And, yeah, it’s a challenge because of all the different time zones, and it’s amazing the range and variety of people that study on ODL. You’ve got people working full time, part time with caring responsibilities. They’re studying their second or third language. I’m in awe of what they are juggling to commit to completing their degree or their postgraduate studies at Sussex. It’s incredible.
The Canvas site that I look after is called the Study Online Student Support Site or the SOS for short. That’s a space where students can utilize the discussion board area and come together across courses. So in their modules, they’re just meeting other people on their module. But on the SOS, they can throw out a question, get a discussion going, and connect with their peers who are studying on different topics, which is really good. And I’m always looking for ways to kind of build on that sense of community and just give students the opportunity to kind of meet each other but within my remit of supporting them. So, one thing I do is provide top tips every Tuesday. We have Top Tip Tuesday and Titbits Thursday because we needed another word beginning with ‘T’ for Thursday, where I try and drop in timely relevant tips depending on the week of the module that just helps them, whether it’s focusing on how to get your head around a long document, a big scholarly article, how to condense that down, note taking tips, other top tips that just help them as busy learners who are juggling a lot. I’d like to give them time saving tips and things and just help them get things done efficiently. So a lot of my focus is if you watch this video, it’s only 20 minutes, but it will save you lots of time in the long run. So, yeah, really trying to support through time saving techniques and making it relevant at the right point in the module as well.
Wendy Garnham: Just on that note, you mentioned the discussion board. Do you get quite a lot of buy-in to the discussion board?
Sarah Ison: Not masses. So that is something that I think can always be encouraged. And if the usage dips a bit, then I can promote it a bit more. So that’s a good reminder that I can keep on promoting that because it just gives them a chance to share things. But the students do set up their own WhatsApp groups. So they do kind of get their own discussions going off official university platforms. So, you know, we don’t always know what’s going on there. But, yeah, I think Canvas is the main place where we can encourage community and coming together in different ways.
Brena Collyer De Aguiar (07:05): So I work much more with the academics, and I would say that my role, so my support goes into two phases. So one is the design phase, where, you know, I will support academics on thinking about making assessments more authentic. Trying to bring, you know, and make it very clear their space for the students to bring their own experience, but also what’s related to the place they live. We have large cohort courses. We have an MSc that is Sustainable Development, so it’s a very big number of students. And how do you also connect those experiences? The other way I try to bring this is trying to promote this conversational tone in the content itself. Like, trying to bring the teaching presence even, you know, when they’re doing their synchronous learning. And then it moves into support the academics during the teaching phase. So I lead, I’ve designed the training, the essential training they have to go. So it’s how, how do you set expectations for academics on how do you make the module live, how do you communicate, how do you set your expectations. So all the live sessions in the ODL modules should be recorded, and that’s to promote a second moment for engagement for those that due to their time zones or work commitments can’t join the live, etc. But also putting some tools in practice. So we do use, you know, we have the VLE – Canvas. We use, we organize the cohort according to time zones just to kind of be easy for academics to deliver live sessions that are according to their time zones. We also promote discussion boards that are set by groups just so they can, you know, communicate between themselves. And of course, some tips on design, you know, like, like Sarah uses as well. Having the discussion boards for introduction that allow them, display a place for connecting through their identity. So discussion boards that are fun or ask them to post pictures of their bookcase and try to guess, you know, who else is reading the same or who could be that person. So that’s kind of how I try to promote those spaces for the students through the design and support academics.
Heather Taylor (09:24): So, Sarah, online engagement can be a challenge, especially as many Online Distance Learning students and mature learners are balancing work and study. What approaches, whether through course design or student support, have you found effective in encouraging engagement and motivation?
Sarah Ison: So I’ll focus probably more on student support. And, as Brena said, she’s not directly student facing. And I’m probably the only one in the Online Distance Learning team at Sussex who is seeing students regularly. And so which is nice because then I get feedback and get quite a lot of dialogue with them. And there is a Student Success team that also provides a lot of support for them, very personalized. They call up the students, check how they’re doing. And I liaise with them to make sure that they’re aware of any updates I’ve given to the SOS or like with AI. There’s a lot of relatively new content that’s gone on the Sussex website that I’m drawing attention to in my sessions. So I’m telling Student Success, this is what I’m telling them so that, you know, if you get a call from a student, you know, to talk about progress and they’re like, “Oh, AI, can I use that?” then they won’t be like, “Oh, what’s the latest advice?” You know, I have a good sort of bridge between them to make sure we’re all singing from the same hymn sheet. And, so, yeah, I support through kind of the session and just being there for students and providing drop-in sessions throughout the module. And the one-to-one element really works well. Obviously, you can’t provide that to everyone, it would be impossible, but so far, it’s not become overwhelming. And there’s a student I’ve engaged quite a lot with who has come to realize that she thinks she’s got ADHD. She’s awaiting a proper diagnosis, but we’ve talked a lot about how to, well, I’ve been trying to help her how to compartmentalize the different things she has to do because she gets so overwhelmed by the amount of reading, the amount of learning she has to do. So we’ve worked together to try and break it all down and think about how she can approach her module. Probably goes slightly beyond my remit, but in terms of managing her readings and the library work and the research skills. She’s like, “Life hacks! Give me life hacks!” I’m like, “Okay. Here’s some top tips from last Tuesday”. But, yeah, we talked about how she thinks her brain works. And that has really helped me think about how can we be inclusive. How can we just offer stuff from the get-go, from the beginning that is accessible to everyone, no matter if they’re neurodivergent or neurotypical. How people learn is so varied that the way that we and the team work together really helps each other because that really informs the, like, the handouts that I provide, you know, the online resources, and what I put on the SOS. You know, I’ve got that in my mind, “This has got to be accessible and inclusive”. And, yeah, trying to provide videos at the point of need that people can dip into and won’t take too long to go through is kind of a key way that I provide support to the students. So, yeah, trying to do the personalized thing one-to-one is really important, but you can’t do that for everyone. And so, therefore, the more generic videos, you just try and make them as inclusive as possible. So that’s kind of my main methods of trying to do that through videos, the SOS, and one-to-one and live sessions.
Heather Taylor (12:24): You know what? I think, you know, like you said, “But you can’t do it for everyone,” and you’re completely right. But I think importantly, you know, and on theme, it isn’t for everyone, is it? Some people don’t want one-to-one. Some people, you know, prefer to just, some people prefer to absorb information relatively passively. Some people want to engage with it and, you know, in different ways. So, actually, yeah, that’s great.
Brena Collyer De Aguiar: I think for ODL students, the design of the modules, so we have a very strong element of consistency across all modules and pages, which then reduces that cognitive anxiety they would have, you know, on trying to look for the information. And also thinking about, you know, it’s student-centered, so it’s thinking about removing as many barriers as we can. So, like, you know, in most of the modules, for example, would have links directly to the guides and to the Study Hub and signposting the resources and examples. For example, we really work with templates, templates for submissions, templates for information. I’ve been lucky enough to be involved in terms of engagement in a couple of projects that we used. We gamified a module, for example, and that kind of made them travel in time, so that was a very engaging experience. So, I’ve, like I said, I am on top of UDL fun. I’m a playful person, and I, you know, I love immersive experience. So every time I can put my finger there, it’s like, “Let’s do something fun”. Of course, you know, like I said, in terms of consistency, not only in the layout, the learning is structured. So they have three different learning phases, which they are encouraged to, you know, go through the lecture content, go through applying those, the learning, but also reflecting on that on top of having spaces for creating community, engaging with, you know, throughout the cohort. Yeah. And flexibility. You know, you can, you can show your presence in different ways and also, you know, in different formats.
In terms of engagement, that’s the only thing that I don’t know if I should say this, is the tutor presence really makes an impact. We have, for example, I’m telling you about a lot of stuff in terms of design. But if the tutor is not engaged, if the tutor doesn’t show his presence on the discussion boards, for example, try to promote the, the discussion, you know, to continue or use announcements in Canvas and show that that module is live and that the teacher is there, you see a huge, you know, difference in terms of engagement. In opposite, if you have a tutor that is really there, and I know the challenge, you know, and we have large cohort modules, which then we require bigger teaching teams, you see that the experience is completely different. So it’s a mix of putting the, you know, designing but making very clear that the human element is there.
Heather Taylor (15:23): Yeah. I think they’re so important. I think even when you’re, you know, when you’re lecturing in person, obviously, like, if I’m lecturing in person, I have to be there and engaging because I’m there. But being just even being enthusiastic about it makes a big difference to the students. They’re not gonna get enthusiastic about something that I sound bored of, right? And I completely get what you’re saying with this, the tutor engagement. If the tutor is not engaging with the with the, you know, online resources and discussion boards and so on that you’ve got, the students essentially are probably gonna think, “Oh, this isn’t really necessary”. “You know, if they’re not doing it, why would I do it?” you know? So, yeah, that’s quite a challenge, though, for you then because then you’re sort of, you know, you’ve made something good. It just needs to be delivered the way you intended it to be delivered.
Wendy Garnham: I love the idea of the gamification. That sounds really good.
Sarah Ison: I was very emotional when you launched that module. It was at the Educational Festival, wasn’t it? And you worked, you collaborated with the academic, and it was amazing. They did, like, this preview. It was like a film premiere. I was really like, “Oh my gosh. I want to study this module”. And I’m not even, you know, I’m interested in Sustainable Development, but it’s not my thing to study. And I was just like, “Wow, this is amazing”. And I felt so proud of you because it was such a different sort of module, completely different to gamify that. And it’s had some amazing positive reviews, isn’t it? Yeah.
Brena Collyer De Aguiar: It is. It’s called, we renamed the module. We called Project Dandelion. And, you know, when you, when you think about, and I know that I again, most of the immersion in that gamification was made through storytelling. So it’s, we really thought the narrative to bring to put the students into that story. We also, the thing that I thought was really good on that as well was because the module was quite depressive, because we were talking about the climate change and waste, etc. So it was a way to actually, how do you say? Swift. Instead of the end being bad, we said, “Okay, we sorted it out. Now you need to travel back in time and figure out what we’ve done”. So then you can see that they are much more in a much happier place, you know. They connect to the emotions and what they could do. Storytelling. Storytelling. And it’s, you know, everyone, we are all, don’t they say that since, you know, the beginnings, every human being is a storyteller? No, we grew telling stories. I love that, so I, I need to stop talking.
Heather Taylor: That is so, so clever though, when you say it, though, because it’s depressing. But you really don’t want to end a module with the world being on fire, do you? You know?
Wendy Garnham: So ODL students at Sussex show strong academic outcomes, including low levels of academic misconduct, I’m pleased to say. How do you support students’ academic literacies, particularly for those returning to study or unfamiliar with the UK academic context?
Brena Collyer De Aguiar (18:23): All academics involved on teaching an ODL module, they need to attend what we call the ODL essential training. The first one, it’s about the teaching, and the second one is about marking because, you know, they are all online, so it’s a bit different than what we do on campus. And on the essential training, I bring, you know, the awareness, so it’s user-centric. It’s making sure they understand that they are dealing with people that are around the world, that they may be too far from, you know, the academy, or if they were close, like me, for example, struggle with the referencing here. You know? Just to make them very aware that those challenges are present. They can’t just assume that they are UK-based students and signposting the resources. So where would you go for support or, you know, flagging that Sarah is there, the module is there, as well as I’ve mentioned before, in the syllabus page and then kind of important places throughout the modules, that always link to resources and to further module information as well as support. The other support moment we have is every time a module, ODL module runs, we have the module survey. And that kind of triggers what we call the module evaluation is where we will be sitting, you know, the development team, the pedagogic advice team, the academic with the survey and reflect further. So every time there is an academic literacy challenge or, you know, it’s always going back and thinking, do we need to signpost more resources? Do we need to have Sarah stepping in into the first welcome live session to point them, you know, how to access those specific resources at the library? And hopefully, you know, addressing the challenge and improving every time the module runs.
Sarah Ison: In the last couple of years, I embedded a few new slides into my live session that I do in the first week of every module, acknowledging the cultural differences when it comes to referencing and what people’s experience might have been in whatever geographical place they’re in. Because one of the academics on ODL told me once how all the way up through her master’s, she was in South America, and she never had to reference, like, anything. It just wasn’t done, you didn’t need to, you could just write, and that was your essay. You handed it in. Fine. And how different is that here? And so I’m then, it just made me think, well, I can’t assume that all the students joining know the UK Western way of referencing and exactly how it should be unless it’s made really explicit. And academics and people like myself, I think, in a support position have a really important job to make that as clear as possible from the beginning. So I see it as a privilege that I meet these students. I try and make it really clear that what they’ve been used to might be different to what’s expected now. So I try and be really clear about, you know, academic misconduct, what that actually means and how to avoid that and the importance of referencing and how you must cite your sources. You must say where those ideas came from. And I really kind of drive that home.
And I was able to kind of adopt the university’s academic practice online workshop. So that’s a Canvas site that students get referred to after an initial case of academic misconduct. They then have to work through it, understand what it means by collusion and academic misconduct, etc. They have to work through that and then it’s a quiz and they have to be checked off that they’ve done it. So I was able to offer that from the beginning. I promote that to the students. They’re all, all ODL students are enrolled on it. They’ve got access to it. We’re in the process of updating it at the moment with other key colleagues from the university. But using it proactively to say, “Have a look at this”. “You know, you might end up coming back here if you were accidentally, you know, plagiarized or something”. “But here’s the information”. “You know, it’s optional, but please do, you know, invest some time in understanding how to avoid academic misconduct”. So trying to be strategic and always mentioning about referencing the importance of it. But I think it was really important to address the cultural differences and not assume everyone knows what’s going on just because they’ve enrolled at Sussex. They don’t necessarily know what’s expected when it comes to that because it might be so different to what they’re used to.
And, we now have a dedicated Online Distance Learning librarian inbox, so students can just fire off questions, and it’ll be covered by me or a couple of my colleagues in the library. There’s always a place students can come to ask. As most librarians will say, if we don’t know the answer, then we’ll probably know where to find the answer and connect you with the information that you need. That’s one of the best things of the job. One of my colleagues does say, she doesn’t quite know how I get so excited about academic skills, but, you know, she’s like, “I feel really inspired now to think about, you know, reading and writing”. And I just, I get excited when I connect people with the information that they need. And a lot of my job is signposting, helping people find what they need, to achieve what they need, but also to avoid important things like academic misconduct.
Wendy Garnham (23:11): I think that is important not to make too many assumptions about what people are bringing to the learning session. So I think it’s quite easy when you’ve been delivering content for some time just to assume that there are certain sort of basic levels of understanding that may not necessarily be there, certainly with quite a diverse cohort. So it’s a good reminder.
Heather Taylor: Yeah. Brena, what are the key things you’ve learned from supporting Online Distance Learning students, and what advice would you offer to academic staff, whether teaching online, in hybrid mode, or face to face about inclusive practice, engagement, and student-centered course design?
Brena Collyer De Aguiar: You probably can sense. I’m not from the UK. So I, I’ve linked my experience with my work as well in terms of diversity and coming from a different cultural background. And I would say that for me, one of the things that I’ve learned more is about expectations. So online learning, you know, requires a lot of expectations to be set. And this should be part of the design from the beginning to the end. Expectations in terms of time that you’ll be spending on that learning, expectation about how, language, you know, technical expectations as well. From the expectations, making sure that the design and my thinking and my advice really brings inclusion as the focus. Like, let’s think further. I was aware, already applying to my kind of other software design work, but now it’s an accessibility that goes beyond. And to understand and probably showcase that, you know, by having the content accessible, you’re not only benefiting students who need, you’re also promoting different ways, you know, for everyone to access the information.
In terms of our advice, and those kind of link very well with the UDL principles, you know, it’s for me, again, being from Brazil, we are all about emotions and feelings. So it’s trying to bring some empathy, pedagogy to your practice. You know, try to promote connection and presence. And when I talk these usually, I flag that this also includes the tutor. So it’s about enabling, you know, that space for everyone, not just the learners, but everyone involved on that caring learning community that, again, enables a better learning space. Joy and fun. I’m all over playful learning, immersion, storytelling. There are, you know, you don’t need to be a pro. You, you know, there are small things you can add to your learning and teaching practice that can make learning more fun. And I would say not promoting ourselves, reflect and develop, you know. I would say if you could and I know some module leaders would do the reflection session in the end with the students to bring their perspectives, what they missed. But as well, you know, connect with your colleagues that had similar experience, and, of course, the resources and the training available.
Sarah Ison: Yeah. I feel I feel like I’ve learned a lot about, just the importance of accessibility and learning design and how that relates to being inclusive. And a way in which that’s been more personal for me has been working with people who are neurodivergent and have really clearly explained to me what helps them work well in a team, what helps them work when I was managing them kind of in that relationship. And then that’s helped me think about, “Okay, what about neurodivergent students?” How are they going to see what we’re offering and what small things can we do, as Brena said, “What small things can we tweak that actually makes all the difference to those learners and is accessible for everyone?” It’s not making it harder for neurotypical people. It’s just making everything easier for everyone. And so that’s kind of my key thing for this question, really, that considering how other people learn and take on that information. If you think about that in terms of what you’re asking them to read, if you’re an academic and you’re building a module, you know, think about how you’ve laid out your reading list material, how clear you’re being about what the expectations are. You know, if there’s a group assignment, how that’s going to be, you know, processed by someone, you know, that’s not you. Putting yourself in someone else’s shoes is so important to just trying to be inclusive. And as with Brena, I’m haven’t done a lot myself, but playful learning is such an amazing way to learn. And so I want to kind of find more ways of doing that in the opportunities that I have through working with ODL students. But, yeah, small things make a big difference. So remembering that as you go forward will hopefully be a good thing.
Wendy Garnham (27:52): It sounds as though one of the real strengths is sort of being able to draw students in to sort of experience what they’re learning about or to at least, as we’ve said, like, immersing them in that. So I guess, so is that more difficult with Online Distance Learning compared to when you’ve actually got students in the room with you?
Sarah Ison: There’s so many tools we can use now to just break out into groups and to collaborate in so many different ways using Padlet boards and other kind of tools that just help you just get ideas together to work together. And we have this amazing relationship in our teams where although we’re made up of three quite distinct groups of colleagues and our work doesn’t always overlap, we have this brilliant, like, connection where because we have short regular meetings as a whole team, we use all these different tools that we could use when working with students as well. You know, I’ve used a Padlet board sometimes where I’ve said, “How are you feeling, students, about you at the start of your module? This side, put up emojis and pictures, whatever. If you’re feeling a bit, you know, negative about stuff, if you’re feeling good, work on this side”. And then at a glance, I could get people’s instant reflections on how they’re feeling about what I was about to talk to them about, which helped me to then possibly adapt my approach to the rest of that session. So you have to be quite flexible and fluid and be able to perhaps, you know, stray a bit from what you might have been planning. So if everyone suddenly says, “I’m really scared about reading long articles because I’ve, you know, had a break in study, and I don’t even know how to read an academic article”. You might think, “Oh, okay, if 20 people are saying that, I better focus on that in this session and maybe talk less about reading eBooks or something”. You know, there might be different things you can focus on. And when you bring that interactiveness into a session and you get other students’ input, it shapes what you do, but they feel listened to and that’s, you know, inclusive.
Wendy Garnham: Yeah. Sarah Ison and Brena Collier de Aguiar, thank you so much for being with us today. Thank you. And thank you for listening. Goodbye.
Heather Taylor:
This has been the Learning Matters podcast from the University of Sussex created by Sarah Watson, Wendy Garnham, and Heather Taylor, and produced by Simon Overton. For more episodes as well as articles, blogs, case studies, and infographics, please visit blogs.sussex.ac.uk/learning-matters.
Keep listening for some bonus chat about today’s topic.
Heather Taylor (30:32): I guess as well, you know, I think these students have decided for whatever reason, they want to do an online course, and I think that can make a really big difference in terms of when we’re trying to deliver something. I think the problem sometimes with having online resources for in-person students is they are quite passive with it sometimes, you know, whereas these students are choosing to do this.
And I think that, you know, remember that year when we was all with the COVID? Remember COVID? And, anyone who signed up to come to the uni knew right from the beginning, it’s going on. It’s all gonna be online, right? I think they knew from the outset, didn’t they? Yeah. Because of the timing of the government or whatever. But, I’m not allowed to mumble. Sorry, Simon. Yeah. And I think that, actually, that year, and it really made me think about it because you both talked about empathy. So you were talking about empathy. You were talking about the importance of connecting, listening, responding. And I actually think that year with the with the students who were all online, I don’t feel as though I had any less of a bond with them or any less of a rapport or, and I think it’s because we all signed up to the same thing, right? And I did tell them at the beginning, “I haven’t taught online really before, I want you to get the best out of this. In order for you to get the best out of this, you gotta work with me, you gotta help me – you gotta get involved – you gotta use the chat, you gotta use the discussion”. And they were so committed. They were so lovely, weren’t they?
Wendy Garnham: They were really engaged.
Heather Taylor: So I think, yeah. And I think, you know, I don’t know. I think that’s really important, though, making, you know, it’s really lovely that we have these online courses because for some people, that is just better. It’s going to suit them better. It’s going to suit, you know, around their schedule or just even the way they like to learn. So I’m really pleased that you’ve not just and I know you wouldn’t do this anyway, but I’m really pleased that, you know, you didn’t just take something that was a standard course and go, “We just say it online”. You know? And you’ve gone, “All right, how can we make this good?” “How can we make it engaging?” “How can we make it meaningful?” “How can we connect with the students?” And I think that’s such a, you know, fantastic thing, basically.
Wendy Garnham: I think just making the students feel heard is like the absolute bottom line because I think also when you’ve got big groups, I mean, it sounds as though you have got quite big groups for the online courses. And, you know, as great as that is, it’s still like, the bottom line is, how do you then make all of those students feel heard as individual? And I think some of the things that you shared are really sort of going to promote that sense of, you know, “I matter, I was seen in this course or, the tutor’s hearing me”. And I think that is, it’s quite hard to get to that level, but I think it’d be useful no matter who’s teaching what, in what context. I think that’s sort of quite a key message for me to take from that.
