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.