Following on from the only partially succesful development of a staff Moodle communication space, an equivalent has now been developed for the Mental Health Students in the School of Health Sciences. The devlopment followed on from the student common room space developed by the School of Arts and Social Sciences, so thank-you to Kate and Anna who allowed some cross Univeristy poaching of resources.
The purpose of the hub is to develop an on-line community of mental health nursing students and provide an interactive platform for communication between staff and students.
Key features of the web space are a Twitter feed from relevant mental health related organisations. This is fed manually via the CityMentHealth Twitter account. There is also an RSS feed connected to Mental health news. In addition to standard features such as information related to the course, and being a City University Student, we have trialled a number of discussion boards. So far these havent been engaged with well, but it is hoped when the new cohort of students come in September we can can embed the concept of communicating on-line at the beginning. Likewise the open surgery whereby a lecturer was available for on-line chat at a regular time each week has thus far not been used by a single student!
The hub has improved commmunciation with the student group as a whole, as previously information had to be uploaded to each individual module. We have a route to publicise events, and are currently compiling a list of staff publications for students to access. There has been some disucssin as to how the live chat could be better accessed, students have fed back that they don’t use it because they are either in class or on placement. Some thought has been given to offering chat sessions during the evening but this does set a precedent for accessibility.
The hub is in the process of being evaluated via an on-line survey and is throwing up some interesting comments, especially regarding students preference for using Facebook.
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