Dr Sally Chappell
School of Life Sciences
University of Nottingham
Students apply
online to individual
universities
How many?
Applications
considered by
course teams
Interviews?
Deadlines?
Student responds
to offer
Or do they?
Offers made to students –
conditional/unconditional

Not always that clear!
◦ Some students accept,
then don’t turn up
◦ Some students don’t
register a decision –
some of these will turn
up
Students firmly accept or
reject the place
List of students starting
the course

How do we get a
better idea?
Email in June –
invitation to register
All possible students (those with
an offer irrespective of decision)
48% started the course
Reminders in
July/August
Those students who registered for
the background material
Course starts at the
end of September
91% started the course
I strongly recommend the
establishment of ATutor
in other courses, as I
found it very informative
and personally I came
well prepared for my MSc.
I had a year out before
attending the masters
course so found it useful
to revise basic knowledge.
I found ATutor
fantastic to use
as a preparatory
system for the
course.
It is a great idea and should
definitely be done for future
students, because I think the
students who did not use it
found the first few weeks more
difficult because they had
forgotten some rather basic
concepts.
The forums are a really
good idea. It was nice to
have everyone introduce
themselves before moving
up to Nottingham.
I did talk to other students and had the
opportunity to meet them before the start
of the course.
I didn't use the forum to ask questions
about the background material because I
didn't have any problems, however I think
this is a very useful way to start studying
and be prepared for the course.
Having additional links on the site,
for example including links to the
school, background reading
textbooks and links on the
Nottingham university (such as
accommodation, funding, academic
support services)
I could add some information
about the modules of the MSc. I
found it difficult to find in UoN
web page detailed information
about assessments or topics
that will be covered in the
modules.
If I had the opportunity I think I would make it
compulsory when logging in to include a photo of
yourself and some background info (where are you
from, what have you studied, where are you living in
Nottingham?)

Improvement in the teaching sessions after
the provision of background material
◦ No real change in assessment grades

Enables students to get to know each other
prior to the course start
◦ Encourages early working relationships
◦ Useful for International students moving to UK


Do we need to include more problem-based
learning, rather than just a set of resources?
Can we use the same VLE for pre-course and
in-course learning?
It would be good to use only one system, so
students can start to get used to Moodle
from the very beginning of the course
because Moodle is a platform that we have
to use during the entire year.


Dr Paddy Tighe (School of Life Sciences)
MSc students from 2014/15 and 2015/16