Best Practices Overview This document will provide you with a collection of best practices or practical tips for

success as an online student and efficient use of the online tools for submitting assignments on time, posting assignments, and interacting in the online classroom. You will also find a link to a description of student attitudes and practices that will enhance your performance throughout your program.

Success in Your Online Learning Community When you begin a programme, you become much more than an individual student accessing web pages and carrying out assignments or working alone toward a degree goal--you become a learning community member. Some of the greatest contributing factors to your success and the award of your degree will be the relationships you build and maintain with other students, with your instructors, and with other University of Liverpool personnel. As a member of an energetic learning community you have the ability to develop and nourish bonds that benefit you and everyone in your programme:

By participating wholeheartedly in module discussion and group assignments and listening to your peers and instructors By asking for help when you require it By mentoring your colleagues with your experience and knowledge By learning and knowing your resources By becoming web savvy By using all communication tools available to you through MyOHE and your module classrooms By allowing others to know you and your best qualities By not taking the easy way out but following the scholars path investigating, analyzing, debating, etc. the materials and content of every module By remembering that every day is a new day for discovery, a new day to do better, and, of course, a new step toward your degree goal

Click here to learn more about the study habits adopted by successful online students.

Classroom Best Practices

Discussion and Participation In the academic modules you are expected to actively participate in Discussions. This means posting your response to the initial Discussion Question or Questions (DQ) posed by your instructor, reading others' postings, and responding to your colleagues' work in a way that demonstrates thoughtful consideration of the ideas and concepts presented in the course and/or provides new ideas and insights related directly to the topic of discussion. Communication - What to Post Where? All modules are set up for academic work. So you will want to restrict yourself to your academic agenda here. Again, the majority of interactions related to weekly discussions and assignments will take place in the Discussion Board area where forums containing discussion topics can be found. When you would like to have casual conversations with your colleagues, please go to the Class Cafe Discussion forum, which has been created for introductions and conversations that do not pertain entirely to your academic work. Of course because the Class Cafe is a public forum, please be sure to follow all "netiquette" guidelines and University of Liverpool policies related to online behaviour. The Blackboard email feature will allow you to communicate with your Student Support Manager, Instructor, and also other students participating in a given module. The email tool will not be used for submitting module assignments; however, you may be asked to submit program documents using the Blackboard email tool. Even though the Blackboard email tool is linked to your personal email address, remember that there is no sent folder to store messages. For this reason, you may want to cc yourself on important messages and store them in your personal email folders. The link to the email area is available in the Communications area of your online classroom. The Laureate Area Student Forum available through MyOHE is where you can meet ALL of the students studying online with the University of Liverpool. A great way to meet new people! Discussion Board Best Practices Opening assignments prior to posting It is important for assignments posted to the Discussion forums that you first post your own work before you open and read the work of other students in the classroom. This can sometimes happen inadvertently, but it is very essential that every student receive an equal opportunity to do well in a classroom and it is unfair for one student to improve his or her work based upon a preview of what others have submitted. Instructors will address this very seriously. They will determine based on the specific areas addressed in the discussion response, citations, sentence and paragraph structure, grammatical elements and writing style, whether responses represent authentic, individual contributions.

Posting a Discussion REPLY Whenever you respond to a discussion post in a classroom, be sure that you use the "Reply" button rather than beginning a new discussion thread, should that option be available to you. This practice will allow you, your colleagues, and instructor to follow the developing discussion easily. It maintains the flow of conversation and keeps a clear record of the context in which you make your comments! Editing your Discussion Posts Your instructor may "lock" the discussion threads or disable the editing features as a general policy or at the end of an assignment week. Please consider drafting your replies using your word processor first to check for completeness and to perform any editing tasks. The spell checker in your word processor is the most reliable tool for finding typographical errors. When you are satisfied with your posting and all citations, copy and paste the reply from your word processing document into the discussion Reply text box. For those citations that require special formatting that cannot be achieved in the discussion text areas, your instructor may ask that you provide this information via another method. If you find, after you post your message that you have left out major areas by mistake, you may post a second response with a note in the subject line indicating an addendum to your previous message. Editing the Subject Line of a Discussion Reply So that you and your colleagues may more easily follow an entire discussion thread, when you post a reply, be sure to edit the subject line of your response to reflect the topic thread to which you are responding. If you are responding to a reply by one of your colleagues, you should also include your colleague's name. Quoting Discussion Text Another practice that will help everyone to read and respond to your remarks is to copy and paste or quote the specific words, point, or text of the discussion item to which you are specifically responding. One way to distinguish the quoted material from your own remarks is to precede the quoted material with the > character. Submitting Assignments Based on the assignment information in each weekly area of your module, you may be asked to submit assignments to the Discussion forum by copying and pasting text or by submitting your assignments through Turnitin. When you submit an assignment using the Turnitin feature, you will upload a file. Be sure to observe any file naming instructions and file formats described in the Assignment area for each week. The acceptable file formats include those files with the following file extensions: .doc, .pdf, .txt., and .rtf. The .doc (MSWord)

format is the preferred format for submitting assignments through Turnitin. However, if you are working with a word processing program other than MS Word, the .rtf format will allow you to make your work accessible and preserve document format. Attachments In the unlikely event that you are ask to attach a file to a discussion reply, file formats for files will be explained in the assignments area of each weekly folder. Unless you are told to attach a document, please do not post attachments. Our students study from all over the world; access and systems are not all equally fast or robust in every location. It can be very difficult and time consuming for some students to download attachments and it is critical to the collaborative nature of the program that all students are able to read your work. Please note: A large number of students and instructors are still using Office 2003 or previous releases. If you are using Office 2007, remember to save submitted files in the .doc format rather than the .docx format that is unique to Office 2007 (you may also be instructed to save these files in .rtf format). If your instructor is unable to open your files they may not be reviewed, potentially resulting in a grade of Fail. This policy also applies to MS Excel. If you are required to submit an Excel document, it must be saved with the .xls file extension rather than the .xlsx.

A Final Word about Collaboration

Remember, this program will not usually have right or wrong answers. Collaboration and discussion on complicated issues is an opportunity for gaining depth of perspective and a degree of enlightenment regarding alternative approaches, but you will rarely find a single answer that falls into the "truth" category. Feel free to explore and examine topics without fear of being "wrong". This approach may help reduce the emotional impact of topics you feel strongly about and allow you to challenge your own perceptions while you study.