Apart from the challenges of getting to grips with the technology, much of which is completely new to these colleagues, perhaps the greatest challenge is that of engaging students in the new experience. Students signed up for a face to face experience and many enjoyed building positive relationships with staff and students and working and learning from and with both.

In my conversations with staff we are therefore concentrating on designing an online experience in which the students can engage purposefully. The first step in doing so is to explain to the students how they are expected to engage and how the staff will work with them. This cannot be explained merely by words in an email but requires active participation from the start. Students need to be provided with a worthwhile activity to perform before the module commences, for example, a response to an academic paper which the staff members will acknowledge with confirming or correcting comments. This modelling of how the module will proceed provides the students with the confidence to engage in subsequent online sessions. But what about the students who lack the confidence to engage in this way or who prefer not to engage so publically (they could have been the students who kept quiet in the classroom)? It has become apparent that very early monitoring of student engagement is vital with subtle follow up to encourage re-engagement.

The worry of my academic colleagues and myself is that the students who do not traditionally put themselves forward to declaim their knowledge and “try out their understanding” publically will not be suited to an online environment that has been designed by those and for those who embrace talking in an open arena without fear or shame.