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.