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Exploration time

The Oxford Brookes course I am doing now started mid-week with a 'Week 0' which is really a time for meeting other students and exploring the Blackboard site. This is a really nice idea: as a student I can get familiar with the course without any pressure to do 'important' things. That is something to remember for my own Communication modules: it's easy enough to give access a few days before the official start and let students explore the module. I wish I had thought of this!

I may be changing my mind about the idea of 'drip-feed' which the Oxford Brookes course. This involves giving students details of tasks before they are to take place. I has wondered about this in my teaching but thought it would be better to prepare students properly about the boundaries of what needs to be done. There is probably a half-way house to explore here too, which would work well with what I call 'flexible frameworks' (ie tasks and readings chosen to support learning outcomes, but with enough flexibility for students to pull things their way).

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