Academic Insights – 6 top tips for... working with others

My name’s Rebecca Ferguson. I work as a lecturer in distance learning. There are several reasons. One of them is because it’s a way of learning in itself. You share perspectives and you discuss things. The second reason is it’s a very effective way of learning. And the third reason is employability. You need to be able to work with your team. Student collaborative tasks depend on the level of study. They might be contributing to a forum; they might be responding to somebody else in a forum. But when you get to higher levels you’d be working on a project with others. You might be carrying out research with others. Shyness and confidence can be a problem for some students especially when they’re in video conferences but in forums it’s a very good way of communicating if you’re shy. Something that a tutor can do to mitigate this is to encourage people to introduce themselves and to talk on a safe subject that they don’t feel stressed about. Just introduce themselves and deal with something relatively impersonal to start with. A solution for that is to share information about when you can work and for how long you can work. Another solution is to timetable how you’re going to work together. They feel that it’s very beneficial because it reflects what they’re going to be doing in a working environment. And it’s something they felt unconfident about before and they now know how to do it. Go the distance.