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Using an online environment to predict student enrolment
- 1. Dr Sally Chappell School of Life Sciences University of Nottingham
- 2. Students apply online to individual universities Applications considered by course teams Student responds to offer How many? Or do they? Deadlines? Interviews?
- 5. Not always that clear! ◦ Some students accept, then don’t turn up ◦ Some students don’t register a decision – some of these will turn up How do we get a better idea? Offers made to students – conditional/unconditional Students firmly accept or reject the place List of students starting the course
- 6. Email in June – invitation to register Reminders in July/August Course starts at the end of September All possible students (those with an offer irrespective of decision) 48% started the course Those students who registered for the background material 91% started the course
- 7. I found ATutor fantastic to use as a preparatory system for the course. I strongly recommend the establishment of ATutor in other courses, as I found it very informative and personally I came well prepared for my MSc. I had a year out before attending the masters course so found it useful to revise basic knowledge. It is a great idea and should definitely be done for future students, because I think the students who did not use it found the first few weeks more difficult because they had forgotten some rather basic concepts.
- 8. The forums are a really good idea. It was nice to have everyone introduce themselves before moving up to Nottingham. I did talk to other students and had the opportunity to meet them before the start of the course. I didn't use the forum to ask questions about the background material because I didn't have any problems, however I think this is a very useful way to start studying and be prepared for the course.
- 9. Having additional links on the site, for example including links to the school, background reading textbooks and links on the Nottingham university (such as accommodation, funding, academic support services) I could add some information about the modules of the MSc. I found it difficult to find in UoN web page detailed information about assessments or topics that will be covered in the modules. If I had the opportunity I think I would make it compulsory when logging in to include a photo of yourself and some background info (where are you from, what have you studied, where are you living in Nottingham?)
- 10. Improvement in the teaching sessions after the provision of background material ◦ No real change in assessment grades Enables students to get to know each other prior to the course start ◦ Encourages early working relationships ◦ Useful for International students moving to UK
- 11. Do we need to include more problem-based learning, rather than just a set of resources? Can we use the same VLE for pre-course and in-course learning? It would be good to use only one system, so students can start to get used to Moodle from the very beginning of the course because Moodle is a platform that we have to use during the entire year.
- 12. Dr Paddy Tighe (School of Life Sciences) MSc students from 2014/15 and 2015/16
Editor's Notes
- Each paper will have 15 minutes to present with 5 minutes in addition for questions. Good afternoon and thank you to the organisers for giving me the chance to present some of the work I’ve been doing on using an online environment to predict student enrolment onto an MSc course, and its possible use in aiding transition into postgraduate education. I’m from the School of Life Sciences at the University of Nottingham, and whilst I’m involved with teaching on several MSc courses, the one I’m going to focus on today is the MSc in Molecular Genetics and Diagnostics which I ran from 2006 to 2012, and still teach a considerable amount on.
- Dealing with applications to Masters level study presents some different challenges to those associated with Undergraduate courses. Firstly, rather than having a centralised application system, the students apply directly to individual Universities, often using online application systems. This automation does have benefits in terms of application handling, but also makes it easy for students to apply to many different courses. The applications are then considered by course teams, and decisions are communicated back to the students using the same online system. Once offers have been made, the students are then required to respond to this offer. In terms of assessing the applications for the courses, there are some practical considerations that need to be thought about. For example, how many other Universities or courses has the student applied to? How can we ensure that our course is their first choice? Are there obvious deadlines for applications? These are also likely to be different between institutions – does this influence which course the student chooses? Can we use interviews not only to make a decision on the suitability of the applicant, but also to provide them with more information about the course enabling them to make more informed decisions about where they wish to study? And what do we do if the student doesn’t respond to their offer? There’s no requirement for them to do so, so how do we know who’s actually going to turn up on Day 1?
- One of the other challenges for PGT education is the time frame. Most standard UK MSc courses are 1 year in duration, so there’s not much time for students to acclimatise to being in a PGT environment. How do we ensure that students are prepared for this transition, especially if they’re coming from an educational background which may be quite different to that in the UK? We also need to take account of the fact that some students won’t be recent graduates and may be returning to study after time in the workplace.
- As I started teaching on the MSc, it became apparent that assumptions I had made about students’ prior knowledge weren’t being met in all cases. This meant that a lot of time in the first module was spent bringing some of the class up to speed with what we thought they would already know. This obviously also then affects the other students in the class, who may be familiar with this material and want to move on to more demanding areas. Several of our MSc courses had previously sent out reading lists for students to look at over the summer, but this in itself presents problems for different students. Many will not have access to University libraries over the summer period, and those applicants who have been working prior to the MSc certainly won’t have access. Given the amount of material now freely available online, it seemed that collecting relevant resources together for students to access would be a much better solution. With this in mind, I created an online environment that students could register for, which contained a collection of relevant resources along with quizzes for students to check their own understanding. There were also a set of forums provided so that students could contact course staff, or each other.