Nuts and bolts session

Title: U-connect – For all new students’ - An online orientation pilot

Claire Nabke-Hatton

Abstract

U-connect is a new online ‘mini-course’ extending orientation for new students from orientation week into the first few weeks of Session. It provides a unique addition to our transition support programs for new students.

Set up within an educational technology platform (software) called ‘WebCT’ which is available throughout UNSW, U-connect is the name of our latest online student service and is basically an interactive web site which provides amongst other things a discussion facility for students. Here new undergraduate or postgraduate students can connect up with each other via the web site and “speak” to other students from different schools, faculties, disciplines and programs using the discussion tools located within the WeBCT environment. Students who would normally not get a chance to meet are engaged in online discussion and use information and learning tools. Some participants are brand new first year students whilst others are transferring from another uni or may be entering as mature age undergraduate students or are postgraduate research or coursework students. Some of the participants are enrolled to study at a distance from the on-campus environment. They are all given access automatically after they’ve first enrolled and when they have activated their UNSW universal password.

Other features of U-connect include self help information and links to useful resources for easing the transition to uni, as well as a quiz and several discussion activities and topics.

The main aim is two-fold:
1) to increase the sense of belongingness of new UNSW students in order to assist their transition to university and enhance their experience of their first year at UNSW
2) to familiarise students with WebCT, the official UNSW online learning environment, which is now used in many UNSW courses which are either partly or fully online (mostly partly online and partly face-to-face)

So U-connect is an online non award course offered within the UNSW official online learning environment (WeBCT). It is also a combination of orientation to university and orientation to educational technology. This session proposes to briefly describe the process of setting up such a program and to give preliminary evaluation results so far.