Reflection on Orientation Design

To develop this blog post I am looking at a project that I am designing at the moment, which is developing the orientation for online students starting their studies in 2018. The orientation is to assist the students in navigating the platform and preparing to start the course. The orientation for the students is one of the most important aspect of the studies because the orientation can make the students like or dislike the course, which will affect their attitude towards the course. So, my task is how to develop an orientation that incorporates Support, Facilitation and Scaffolding.

In my own personal lecturing practices, I like to facilitate students and let them build their own knowledge with minimal help from me. Coming from a Humanities background that is effective, however, when I tried to develop the orientation program in that way I realised that it was not going to be effective. I looked at what questions the students are still asking as we come to the close of our academic year and I realised that the students at the end of the semester are still asking ‘basic’ navigational questions which should not be the case.

So, I rethought the idea and looked back at the orientation course and realised two things. Firstly, orientation course should be a real hand-holding approach in which every little section is dissected and detailed. However, the second point is that there are many diverse students coming into the program, some who already have experience on the platform. If the orientation is too basic for them then they will also develop a resistance to the course. Therefore, the orientation should be adaptive to the students and allow for all students to benefit from it.  

My understanding has now changed and I realise that the orientation should be designed to be very basic, but it should be done in chunks so that students can jump around the orientation to where they need specific assistance and not be stuck in areas that they already know. The students need to come out of orientation knowing exactly what is expected of them, how to navigate the platform and be motivated to start the course.

Through this research and reflection, I have decided to provide the information for orientation through PDF and YouTube video and all the sources will be tabbed correctly. This will allow for students to identify what section of information they need and be able to find the information quickly and effectively or they can start at the beginning of orientation and go through the whole course in chronological order.

It is my belief that designing the orientation this way will allow students to be able to access support and assistance quickly and effectively. This allows for students to develop their own knowledge and locate the gaps in their knowledge without having to go through all the available information.

As previously said I had a problem when designing this method as it seemed too handholding for me, however, I realised that when a student is starting to navigate a new course it should be very basic and there should be a lot of hand holding. If this is done effectively then navigation will become autonomous and then the students can concentrate more on going through the learning material. The students can then concentrate on the material and developing their skills and not on navigational issues. I believe this method will also compliment the blended learning as the students who attend the face to face orientation cannot retain all that information. There is such an information overload that the students struggle to remember what they heard. They will be able to go back to the information presenting online and go through the information when it becomes relevant to them.