Engaging Students in Online Distance Learning - sparqs

A guide for institutions and students’ associations on engaging online distance learning (ODL) students in shaping the quality of their learning experience. It provides tools, case studies and guidance and is based on work with a number of institutions.

The guidance was developed with the help of input from across the sector and is aimed at those who have responsibility for engaging ODL students in quality, such as student officers and students’ association staff, staff with quality, management or learning and teaching roles, and those directly involved in ODL delivery.

The objective of the resource is to enable those in related roles to reflect on and enhance their engagement of ODL students, with a view to those students better shaping their learning experience and feeling as full a part of the partnership approach to quality as any other students.

Engaging ODL students is not a limited issue where solutions lie within one locus of responsibility, but is a wide-ranging aspect of quality that involves multiple dimensions of practice and levels of decision-making. It is therefore recommended that those working together to use this guidance include a range of institutional roles relating to quality, learning and teaching (especially of course in ODL provision) and student engagement, plus academic- and ODL-related officer and staff roles in students’ associations.

During consultancy work with Hibernia College in Dublin during 2017 (as featured in one of the case studies contained in this guidance), sparqs developed a Tool for Developing a Forum for Students on Online Courses, also accessible via this Resource Library.

(June 2018)

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