Academic Insights –

My name is David Hann. I’m a lecturer in English Language and Applied Linguistics, and I was a distance learning teacher for 10 years. Students need to engage with the course, which means not only engaging with the course materials and the course concepts, but engaging with their tutors; engaging with their fellow students. And they also need to plan ahead. Partly through the grades that they give them, but that is accompanied by probably something more important, which is the feedback that students receive for each assessment that they do. When you get your tutor feedback, read it very, very carefully. And if there’s something about it which you don’t understand, then you need to check that with your tutor, and when you look at the feedback, look back at your own work, and see what the tutor is talking about and reflect on how you can improve on those areas which your tutor has identified. Assessment is very important in – as a barometer of how students are doing, and how students understand and engage with the materials that they’re studying. But it’s more than that: the continuous assessment that students have throughout the course is also a means for them to learn: to learn about what they’re doing well and what they need to do better. The most important role the tutor has is to give you feedback on how you’re doing on the course. Collaborative learning is very important for student success. Doing things with your fellow students can be very, very useful, for two basic reasons: first of all, in real life we have to collaborate; and secondly, other people’s ideas feeding into your own is very, very useful when it comes to learning . If they’re feeling that they are not succeeding, they first should talk to the tutor about that. A typical mindset of a successful student is to be positive, and engaged, but to be realistic at the same time. So they need to have a sort of ‘can do’ attitude. But when they can’t do it they need to seek help. Go the distance.