Week 0: induction activities
As soon as you have access to the online course pages on Brookes Virtual you can start these induction tasks. The better you know your way around the online environment, the easier you will find it to engage fully in the scheduled activities. Below are some suggested activities to familiarise yourself with the course materials and learning environment. By the time you've worked your way through these you should be able to:
- navigate your way around the different course areas, read discussion messages and post a message to the appropriate area
- navigate your way around the course materials and resources so that you can quickly find information related to the scheduled course activity and your own areas of interest. You might want to have a look at the 'Getting started with Brookes Virtual' guide
- start to familiarise youself with the contents of the course text, which you should have received by post, or borrowed from the library (if you are a member of Brookes staff).
Activity A: arrivals
Purpose - to confirm arrival on course.
Skills - negotiation and use of online discussion facility in the course on Brookes Virtual.
Read a tutor's message in the Arrivals Lounge and post your own message in reply to it to let us know that you have arrived safely.
Activity B: time management
Do the quiz on Managing your time. This is designed to help you think through how to engage effectively with this course over the next four weeks. Select it from the Week 0 Induction Activities menu on the left of your screen.
Activity C: getting to know the resources
Browse the course site. Material and resources are arranged by week (Week 1, Week 2 etc), and are 'drip' fed to become live and accessible on Mondays one week in advance so that you can plan ahead. So, during week 2, for example, you will find that you can access the week 3 activities and resources but not those of week 4.
Flip through the course text - we will be reading chapters 1, 6 and 7 in week 1, so you might like to get started on that.
Activity D (optional): connect with the course on Twitter
The course hashtag is #tocjun13: you can tweet using that hashtag to share your ideas with us in the Twitter feed on the main course page. If you use Twitter, let us know your account name in the Twitter thread in the week 0 discussions, and you can find the tutors on Twitter, too: @ejlovegrove and @ncurrant.
