TY - JOUR
T1 - Out of sight, but not out of mind
T2 - a case study of the collaborative development of a university-wide orientation resource for online students
AU - Garivaldis, Filia Joanne
AU - Chung, Jennifer
AU - Braganza, Leah
AU - Arulkadacham, Lilani
AU - Sharma, Richa
AU - Reupert, Andrea
AU - McKenzie, Stephen
AU - Rose, Geoffrey
AU - Gupta, Timsy
AU - Aziz, Zahra
AU - Mowbray, Tony
AU - Ilic, Dragan
AU - Mundy, Matthew
N1 - Funding Information:
Open Access funding enabled and organized by CAUL and its Member Institutions. The project was funded by Monash University. No other funding from other specific grants from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors were received.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022, The Author(s).
PY - 2022
Y1 - 2022
N2 - The global online education sector has been rising rapidly, particularly during and after the events of 2020, and is becoming mainstream much sooner than expected. Despite this, research studies report higher levels of perceived isolation, difficulties with engagement, and higher attrition rates in online compared to equivalent on-campus programs. Reasons include restrictions to the type of institutional support accessible by online students, and the lack of comprehensiveness of orientation resources. This paper describes the collaborative efforts by a cross-faculty academic team, supported by a community of practice, to create a university-wide online orientation resource—the Monash Online Learning Hub (MOLH). The development of the MOLH involved multiple phases, including an analysis of current practice, resource design and content creation, formative evaluation by staff and students, and successful integration into the university’s mainstream student orientation platform for widescale implementation. The methods adopted were varied, and involved generating both qualitative and quantitative data across multiple phases of development from online education experts at the University, that culminated in the gradual building and refinement of the MOLH. Final outcomes, implications and lessons learned are also discussed in this paper.
AB - The global online education sector has been rising rapidly, particularly during and after the events of 2020, and is becoming mainstream much sooner than expected. Despite this, research studies report higher levels of perceived isolation, difficulties with engagement, and higher attrition rates in online compared to equivalent on-campus programs. Reasons include restrictions to the type of institutional support accessible by online students, and the lack of comprehensiveness of orientation resources. This paper describes the collaborative efforts by a cross-faculty academic team, supported by a community of practice, to create a university-wide online orientation resource—the Monash Online Learning Hub (MOLH). The development of the MOLH involved multiple phases, including an analysis of current practice, resource design and content creation, formative evaluation by staff and students, and successful integration into the university’s mainstream student orientation platform for widescale implementation. The methods adopted were varied, and involved generating both qualitative and quantitative data across multiple phases of development from online education experts at the University, that culminated in the gradual building and refinement of the MOLH. Final outcomes, implications and lessons learned are also discussed in this paper.
KW - Community of practice
KW - Educational co-design
KW - Online education
KW - Online study support
KW - Orientation resource
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85125036961&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/s11423-022-10090-3
DO - 10.1007/s11423-022-10090-3
M3 - Article
C2 - 35228785
AN - SCOPUS:85125036961
SN - 1042-1629
VL - 70
SP - 531
EP - 558
JO - Educational Technology Research and Development
JF - Educational Technology Research and Development
ER -