 Well, it's nice to, nice to meet you all. I appreciate that it's somewhat one-way traffic in this but it do keep the questions coming into the chat and at the end there will be a chance if you want to ask questions through the audio you may. So my name is Tage Porewald and I'm going to share my slides here and I am the program convener for the MSc International Development and we have two programs so I'm actually going to be speaking some of you may be thinking about enrolling on the MSc Humanitarian Action and both of the programs basically run you know side by side so the format the medium the system all of it is the same it's just the content that's different so hopefully I'll be able to answer some of the questions that those of you who are interested in the humanitarian program you can direct them to me and if I'm not able to I we can we can put you in touch with someone else that can. So yes welcome to SOAS online and I think what I'll begin by just saying that these programs began in the Development Studies Department in October 2019 and that's just a few months well actually just as the pandemic was beginning in one part of the world it reached London in March 2020 and what we found was we had started a program that you know was all online but of course as we are now as we see so much of what we do now in terms of education in terms of other sectors as well so much of the work that we're doing and learning that we're doing is and communication we're doing is online so hopefully you're not feeling as though and I think that's one of the biggest questions is like is this a real degree and I'm hopefully going to give you a sense of what learning online looks like and what the experience can be so the session is just really very short I'm just going to just give you a bit for those of you who are interested in Development Studies is kind of thinking about why Study Development Studies but also I want to think about a little bit about what makes SOAS I think different and unique in lots of ways and I think one of the one of the things is that it's a place that people come for critical perspectives really there are a lot of there's so many universities in the world that you can go to to study Development Studies or International Development or Humanitarian issues but there SOAS does certainly have I think a very unique place in the world for being or generating particularly critical perspectives which oftentimes are challenging mainstream approaches which you often get in other places so I hope many of you might be coming for that and others if you might be coming for other reasons I might actually in fact invite you in the chat to say kind of why you're interested in in studying at SOAS or how you heard about SOAS as we go I can get a sense from you there too I'm going to then just give you a hint a little bit about kind of what distance learning looks like what is it what what is the format what would it mean for you in terms of maybe your your schedule your working lives your personal lives to enroll on a distance learning program and then I'll end with some frequently asked questions and then give you time to ask to ask some questions as well so as I mentioned I think one of the one of the attractions I've seen in the past with students coming to our programs and we we we kind of in many ways pride ourselves on on the idea of critical thinking and it's not to say we're the only place that does it but in terms of development studies it it's known in many ways for thinking about the historical and political backdrops of development because of course we can look at development and look at it in terms of SDGs we can look at it in terms of the data we can look at it in terms of targets we there are many different ways in which we can understand development so one dimension is that it understands and of course colonization the experience of colonialism and its impacts in terms of the the persistent inequalities that we see is one dimension of that another is reading between the lines and and not taking kind of the idea of development necessarily at face value and so really deconstructing the kind of rhetoric and buzzwords that we see floating around and and questioning them oftentimes for their Eurocentricity how they're tied to systems and structures of power which oftentimes themselves are producing inequalities so it's kind of you know looking really at the face of the structures and and and the systems and asking those kinds of questions about not just how we can solve problems but also how we can address the causes and understand them better and in order to do that I think we we really try to consider you know a range of of approaches and I won't say it's all about kind of being kind of thinking non-Eurocentrically it's also about looking at different ideological theoretical conceptual and I think for the core modules you'll find in particular that's where you really get an idea of oh this is the kind of thinking that's out there some of it at least and some of the debates that exist there and it's a good way for you in your first module when you join the program to kind of get an idea I mean I think many people and many of you might already be working in development or the humanitarian sector and maybe wanting to get more of an academic background and that certainly the the core modules for both of our programs are really very much about giving you that grounding so it's not only about critical thinking but it's also of course about writing and I'll explain in shortly what that means in terms of the training that you get so just an example some of the debates and development studies and this is just a couple of them that you would be introduced to in the core module for international development is what do different measurements of poverty and inequality tell us so we might look at one table which tells us and it uses the HDI the human development index for instance we might look at another indicator which tells us which looks at consumption and may use different ways of understanding how inequality is actually being produced or where there may not be a comprehensive health service or something where we can then understand how health indicators might be mapped on to that so we have different ways of considering and I think looking at one problem there may be many different ways and not only in terms of concepts but also the the tools so we we expose you in many ways to different kinds of ways of thinking in that way and one so one another debate is that of looking at capitalism of course you have to be critical of capitalism even if you agree that it if it's it's inevitability we still must be very critical of it and so one big question that we have which kind of runs across two of our weeks in the core module is does neoliberalism which is the recognized oftentimes as the triumph of capitalism is it the triumph and how does this impact on development you know what is the relationship between capitalism and development and of course they're intrinsically tied so we look at that in terms of agrarian policy or industrialization but we might also look at it in terms of labor employment alienation poverty so there's a number of different kind of ways in which one one concept can lead and we encourage you in your essays to follow those leads you might find an area that you're really interested in but it kind of cuts across some of those topics well you can develop your essays in ways that that can that can kind of cater towards your your particular interest the third question I have here is is development by definition colonial so the idea of progress itself again that's a deconstruction there even the idea of development we question where where are its origins is is there a timeline is it a teleology where is it located what is the end goal and who is outlining or dictating the terms of it and who's managing those processes so there are a number of different ways in which you can do that and we have I think a really exciting area within our some of our our modules which is in the area of decolonization and thinking thinking decolonially about development and there's a lot of you know really they're really good examples that are out there of attempts to actually think critically about development and ways that don't reproduce the colonial patterns the final example I have here is how is gender instrumentalized oh it's International Women's Day today so we might think oh is it is gender women necessarily well gender is obviously about the kind of social construction of gender is not just about men and women it's also about the social construction of roles but we can also look at it in terms of heteronormativity and how that exists within development policy and discourse and that's one area that we've kind of developed I have an optional module called the politics of gender and feminism and development where we actually look at development and say is our gender binaries kind of are an imposition in development where all of the the struggles over the last four or five decades to achieve gender parity or gender gender equality many of them are really rely on the male female binary and so much so much of the data the targets the planning the programs the intervention so much of it or so much of that whole area of work really is hinged on that and in this era of gender recognition and diversity we're seeing there's some real challenges to those perspectives and so that's a new area I think in many ways for the development sector more broadly and it's a really critical and the important area that we should be looking at and I think students have quite enjoyed engaging with that so that's just to kind of give you an idea of some of the topics and those are just a few of them and I'm just going to show you in my subsequent slide what what the topics look like I mean so I've kind of outlined already kind of why join the kind of development studies programs at SOAS and of course it's not just thinking critically but it's also kind of has an ethos of progressive you know many students come to SOAS not all we think you know they have got ideas of of wanting to have a very you know socially engaged approach to the kinds of studying and the learning that they want they want to do and they want to apply it and oftentimes think that they can make a difference in whichever areas they're working in another I think important attraction really for distance learning is the pedagogy and it's it's a very inclusive accessible user-friendly flexible student-centered approach to learning and it's a different experience it isn't about and many of you might have done undergraduate studies or maybe even other postgraduate studies elsewhere where you are on campus so you're a physical student who would go and attend lectures in a room with your classmates it's a different mode of learning and the pedagogy is different but we do have now of course these we're on zoom now and this is one way of of of accessing the kind of university space but there are also other ways as well so the pedagogy in many ways can is is more flexible for people who are located and I can see Poland, Angola, Cornwall, Florida you know different places you're all over the world you would basically be sitting in a classroom and you'd be on the online discussion forums with people sitting all over the world and so that brings with it new kinds of conversations different kinds of experiences as well which I think do make the distance learning experience unique hopefully all of that equips you know would equip you with the skills and knowledge to engage with the kinds of issues that that we think are important and that you you do too so here are the aims of the distance learning programs that we have I mean the first is is really thinking about interdisciplinarity so you might and I think we use that word interdisciplinarity just because development studies in itself is quite interdisciplinary people have come from areas in terms of their previous studies who've studied economics politics anthropology social policy and even sometimes non-social science programs as well and they still are able to kind of make that transition but most of it is the interdisciplinarity it gives you a kind of agility across different kinds of literature different languages I'd say in terms of social science literature as well so we give it we try to give you a good exposure in that way the second aim is giving a specialized knowledge where we introduce case studies and examples that you then become familiar with because they they they are or they might exemplify or illustrate something that you might have read about as a theoretical or conceptual idea and then you have the examples and case studies to to kind of highlight like this is what this means or has meant in in in practice we also apply a lot of policy thinking in terms of the teaching and the curriculum that we have so that you're you're not just reading theory it's also related to whether it's contemporary policy but it might also be policy shifts that have taken place over time as well so giving you that introduction to how the significance of policy is but for you to be able to also relate your learning to policy and the final aim we have is having the kinds of analytical skills to proceed to and and written skills of course within that to be able to either move on in terms of your career professional development or even potentially go on for further research so those are the four main aims of the program and and basically the distance learning programs both of our programs have this structure and you can see this structure on our webpage as well and it's it there's actually some more detail there if you if you like but just for today's purposes i wanted to just show you what what it what a what the program would look like over the two years and so basically if you're joining now in april and we have intakes in both april and october of each year that you would take your first module and it would be one module at a time so you're not going to be overloaded with many different modules and having to read across the different kind of reading lists you'll be taking one at a time but they are and this is the this is the pedagogy is that we would begin and you would begin in april around the mid april or mid october whenever you'd register and we basically have 12 topics and each week there is a discussion forum that goes alongside the topics and you would be engaging along with that so the module would run from april until august and then the next one would be from october until february and then so on so you can see here you'd be taking 30 credits at a time and while you're doing those 30 credits at a time times four and this is showing you what it would look like over two years you would then eventually have the the dissertation and the dissertation is actually run throughout the module sorry throughout the program so you'll be doing these 30 credit modules and in between them you'll have a couple of weeks in which during those weeks you would have dissertation a mini module to kind of begin to get you thinking about your your topic so it's a very guided kind of approach you're kind of you're being guided through the modules and then you're of course your core modules you have the two the word guided again here the two two modules you choose from the development studies list and then you can take an elective module from outside of development studies as well and and and that's basically what a progression of your program would look like and if anyone has well we can you can ask at the end I suppose or if in the chat there's anything you'd like to ask here so this is what the the core module looks like for the MSc international development and this is the module that's called political economy and sociology of development so you can see it covers it spans quite a few topics here and it gives I mean a quite I would say it's an overarching kind of approach but actually it's quite a fine a foundational approach to contemporary development studies and it actually mirrors what we do on campus so it's not a different curriculum altogether it actually draws from our core modules on campus and in many ways I guess the the it's not just the curriculum well the curriculum is very similar but it what it what makes it different from the on campus is just the pedagogy okay so you can see here from the schedule the topics begin so this is actually last april's date specifically but you can get an idea here the essays so you begin in april and the first essay would be due around the fifth or sixth normally of august and it's not as though you're every week going to be intensely busy but what happens is that you you end up having you have group seminars which are like this where you'll be on a gallery on zoom with your classmates and with the tutor but you would also have in between you can see the study skills seminars or webinars which are there to help you in terms of for those of you particularly who might be coming from different countries different writing styles or who have left you know an academic setting or university for you know for after a long time that you're coming back after a long time so we do have those kinds of writing and study skills kinds of sessions as well so the pace so let me start I'll show you this is the humanitarian action core module as well you can see so it's the same format with yeah with a pace of the introduction and you can see each week has a topic and you're all of your reading and you're commenting in the discussion forums as you're reading along the discussion forums are there to for you because obviously we understand that you're all in different time zones I think all of you here right now are we're all in different time zones so this is an asynchronous form of learning so you will be for some of you it will be middle of the night others of you will be right in the beginning of the day and so therefore you can engage with each other in an asynchronous time but still be part of the same discussion and so these weekly forums that I keep mentioning and activities I think these are the two things that might distinguish distance learning and from other programs that you might see is that these are the discussion boards where you interact this is where this is the ongoing topics and weekly readings and interactive material and so I can see one question here about the group seminar so we basically do a doodle poll and we'll generally have two set in case the time zones are completely you know unworkable I'm trying to think this term I haven't actually done that mapping this term the last term I'll just say we did we did a mapping to see the time zones and it was I think the furthest east was Auckland and the furthest west depending on where you want to say let's say we're making London at the centre here okay not trying to say not to be Eurocentric and the furthest west was Vancouver or Panama City I think so we ended up having two different time zones with you know a lot of students you know there'll be places where people are clustered you know Kenya, Rwanda, at that time Myanmar for people who were working and then Middle East also and Jordan you find that actually there are people in your class who are who might be in the same region yeah it's not even uncommon so we had a two we had a one of our thematic seminars and students were engaging and we discovered that two were actually in the same city and they discovered they actually didn't live far from one another so that was kind of interesting as well so you may you may you may find that those are places that you find you get to know people even if it's just you know it's online too but you realise you have more in common in that way too so it's kind of a combination of things so it's the weekly you know discussion boards where you're typing in you're reading you're commenting you're given set tasks as well so that's actually it's not just it's not a free free for all kind of I mean you're free to also comment too but that they are they're quite structured you'll be it's kind of like here are the questions for this week you know looking forward to hearing from you all and it's kind of like you go and you've got from the beginning of that week until the end at whatever time suits you to do that to post your reflections and responses to your other two other classmates as well so that's that's part of the discussion forums the other side so those those are the discussion weekly discussion forums so we also have activities so those are assignments or they are essays or assignments okay that's our way of calling an activity so basically those are those are what you will be submitting for your mark for your assessment for the overall program and there are five of them even though technically we have six but one of them is participation and engagement interaction and basically you would you would have a set a task to do so activity to for instance is an information and library retrieval task okay so you would be given a go find a reading and tell us a bit about it and then post it it's a very quick short one but it's that you're actually learning kind of you know referencing library skills right using the online sources so that is one so that is one and it's worth five it's not sorry that one is not worth any points but it's just to show that you and that you understand how to do that task the next one is a text critique so there'll be a set reading and then you're given you're given a guidance about how you would write about that text and then it moves on so activity three is text critique four is an essay plan five is another text critique and then six is the final essay which is five thousand words they're all building so it's the pedagogy is it's very you know formative until the summative the final five five thousand words it's all helping to support you so you're not it's low risk in many ways that you can if you if you have been out of education for a while at least you'll get that feedback so it's five percent you know fifteen percent five percent and then it's seventy percent for the final essay and that's way that goes okay so okay so Adara has asked about outside of scheduled seminars you can interact well well what happens is that people the students do arrange things outside and they do get to know each other through the online you know whatever forms whether it's whatsapp or other kind of online medium so absolutely students are welcome to get to know each other in your group you would also be able to and I'm going to mention that in a little while about being at SOAS right so you you would so much has gone online now at SOAS in terms of the campus on campus activities that you'll find that you will probably be taking advantage of attending seminars there which are open to the public also or there might be a departmental seminar that will be holding that will also be online so you'll find that that will also be another place for you to get to know even the wider kind of community at SOAS and not just on your own program but for your own program really it's the thematic seminars the discussion forums and then of course you'll be in your groups and you'll find that students will probably will want to get to know each other as well I hope that answered that question okay okay so basically so this is great I've just come to commonly asked questions I'm getting a few so my Tage that's a very good name sounds like mine how many students on average you take in one group so I mean basically it depends on the larger group in your in your year or your cohort it we we basically won't have more than 20 in a in your discussion forum group but there may be 40 in the overall group but we will will always keep it will cap it at 20 you'll have opportunities get to interact with the others and the other groups but we try and keep it to that's just because we want you to be able to have a smaller yeah that's my smaller group so you'll have more interaction so I'm just going to give you a couple of questions and you feel free to keep on asking the questions in the chat as well so how much study time should I plan to spend each week this is one of the most commonly asked questions and basically the answer is there's no set time to spend and it really had some I mean a lot of times it has to do with your pace of reading you know maybe for some of you English may not be your first language or it may be that you're coming you studied a science before and now you're coming to social science there may be other reasons but or you may be a very fast reader so maybe familiarity with the concepts for the first few weeks you may need more time but I would say for the first two to three weeks I would try to set aside time for the core readings and basically what you'll you would see on the and we basically everything is on what we call the Bloomsbury learning environment or the Moodle and you basically will log in there and you'll see for the topic one you'll see that those readings will be there and there'll be two normally two core readings sometimes three if they're short but normally two and they shouldn't be longer than 30 pages for both of them really or maybe 40 pages and so you'll have time you'll have time during the week to read those and many students who I mean who are full time doing this full time and they're not working at the same time and I think that is another big question people ask is it possible to work alongside so I mean this is set up for people who are working but it's also something that people who are not and who are doing this full time can actually you can do all of the readings and get a lot more out of the course if you're able to and so I would basically just try and pace it and get to know yourself in terms of your own needs so maybe begin with having 30 to 60 minutes a day if you're working especially or maybe it's 60 minutes to you know two hours a day I don't know how much time you would need but I think the main point is to schedule it and to keep that time to really make sure that you don't think that it's something you can do at the end I think that's the biggest warning I would give to anyone who wants to join our distance learning programs it might be different in other universities but it's not something you can leave to the end I hope you got a sense of that it starts from the week one and basically you have to be in it you have to be on those discussion forums because you also won't get to know your classmates either you won't be able to contribute to the discussions and you won't be able to be part of the pedagogy which basically builds from activity one until six so you really do once you commit to it you know you start but it's it may not it may just be a couple of hours a week for you to do it so it is very doable people do it I would say probably most most of our current students are working either part-time or full-time many of them are actually working in the field in terms of working in the development sector and they are doing this alongside and the flexibility in terms of the timing is a big attraction but also the fact that they don't have to take study leave from work they can do this alongside while they're working so I would say maybe a majority of our students are actually doing that and maybe that is part of the attraction for those of you who are here today as well. The live sessions I think we've added those in because I think they are something that students seem I think seem to want to have but we don't make them compulsory that's because not everyone can make them for various reasons but we do record them so you can always catch up on them later if you're not able to attend okay here's another one which is if you're returning to university after a long time and you think you feel rusty and uneasy about your academic writing skills how will you adjust and I've already answered that as well by saying telling you about the pedagogy those activities are designed to ease you into academic writing like so I mentioned the information retrieval exercise to the short and when I say they're short actually the information retrieval is 200 words, activity three you know is 600 words it just moves it moves on very gradually so they're kind of building blocks short small tasks that you do but you very quickly you get feedback as well and you're able to then move on to the next one having learned from you know that experience so you'll be able to and if you need the extra support we do have as I mentioned before the study skill sessions to help you further so people who are in London or in the UK or flying through which is also not completely uncommon can get access to the campus and library so you just have to come into the onto campus and check that it's out you know the library's open at that time on that day and just show them your they'll well you have an email once you have a saw us email ID you can just show them your registration kind of confirmation and they can issue you with a card the library card are there any other questions that you might have so Dara's asked what would we recommend from the pre-reading list so once you've enrolled we send out a kind of open access list so meaning that you don't have to have a university ID to get access to them some of them are links but you can just kind of click on and then we always some of them are PDFs that we just send and they're actually taken from the core module so hopefully that will give you an idea and I think people enjoy coming into a module having already read at least one or two of the readings that are on the list okay when are we able to share the curriculum for the upcoming April cohort in order to plan alongside so once once you've registered and enrolled we can I mean I don't we will still be finalizing and updating the BLE and everything is on that on the Moodle so that would be there but we will have the calendar I don't know if that's what you mean about the curriculum for the in terms of planning alongside war so I showed you that kind of table that grid we've got others that kind of are more detailed they show when which activities do so you can plan ahead knowing that maybe you want to take you might need a day or two that week if you've got a particularly busy week that you know to plan for that so that that would be that's that's made available so I think as soon as you know you you've registered and everything you begin you can you'll get you'll be sent those kinds of details are professors available through their email for questions for students yes they and we are we also have online office hours so I basically in the bottom of my email ID I have a I have a link I think it's on my personal webpage now as well but you have yeah you you can book because you may not if you've got quest lots of questions sometimes it takes longer to actually answer an email or serve someone to get back to you so sometimes it's easier just to book an appointment and I do them as 20 minute slots and I hold office hours through the week and so do other the other academics as well is it possible to receive a student ID yes so you would need to come in and do that though and that as I mentioned that process you show you can show it on your mobile device to show that you've registered and you've got your sourced ID already to get the the call the physical sourced the library card is the ID is there possibly to have direct one-on-one interaction with lecture if there are any specific so basically that's what the office hours are I mean the your base your your main interactions would be with the associate tutors who are very accessible they tend to people they'll they'll be themselves people who've worked in the department most of them have done their PhDs already in the department are very familiar and are also teaching on campus so they have office hours across on campus and and also online so you're able to access them but also the course the module convener as well does an online master's is equally valuable to progress to yeah so I would say yes we do we have actually students in this this year one who has nearly finished but has already started the PhD and I think it actually depends on your your background and your profile and what program you're going on to do the kind of studies if it's in development studies partly probably yes but you would need to look to the program that you're thinking of applying to I mean what I would add there is that also I mean for us we do we do very strongly believe that our online distance learning programs are of equal value to our in-person programs and that they are just a it's just a different a different way of taking a program but what I would say is also when you get your certificate after you've completed your program it won't actually say distance learning on it it doesn't say in person on either it's just a certificate from us as a university so again you know I think sometimes there are kind of worries from students that might my certificates get to a distance learning and would that mean that maybe certain institutions maybe certain organizations might see that differently to a in-person program but for us we don't differentiate between them yeah I mean I might even say that distance learning is for some people it's actually better I mean it depends on what you're coming in for I mean if you want the interaction on campus yes of course it's great to be on campus but if you're there if you're coming to do a master's because you want to dig deep into the kind of topic areas and you've chosen the modules you know what you want to do you can get a lot out of this and really I mean what I've seen is people's writing improve so much because of our pedagogy it's very different from what we do on campus so our on-campus module which is comparable say to the development studies core module you know you would do an article review and then two article reviews and an essay and here we've done these six activities which are shorter and they come quite quickly during those you know 12-15 weeks but you'll find that your progress you know it's over two years our on-campus is of course on it's either part-time for two years or full-time one year but the pedagogy itself is quite different but equally valuable absolutely and I think I mean we have you know we have people whose you know places of employment are sponsoring them from from various international agencies so it's it's certainly recognized in the development sector and the humanitarian sector as well as being a you know a good degree to do if you want to work in that area I just wanted to go up to one of the Ines has said about the so my dates I mentioned those dates were not correct so just ignore those that was just showing the sequence I didn't have didn't have a chance to update the dates so the dates they fall slightly later this year then they didn't then they did the previous previous cycle I think there's a question about visa support so in terms of the online and distance learning programs the university doesn't actually provide a doesn't actually provide a letter to assist students with like an actual visa to come to study in the UK to be based here whilst you're studying however if you are coming to visit the UK and you would like to ask if there is anything the university can provide I would contact our advice at soas.ac.uk team who are fully trained on visa advice and they'll be able to give you the most up-to-date information on what we are able to provide and what we aren't able to provide in terms of visiting the UK because visiting the UK would be different to getting a student visa to the UK one is is for the full duration of the program and which would be based on actually being in person and the other would be a short-term visit to the UK which would possibly include coming to the university and meeting staff at the university. Okay okay I almost was thinking how much how much more time do we have Kim? We have another 15 minutes or so. Okay so what I was thinking while I'm talking about one I was thinking of just quickly I'm going to stop my share and going I was going to just show what the BLE looks like and then while answering another question here is Heidi is thinking about timekeeping and yes juggling lots of different things alongside work, family it's something that you know our students come into knowing you wouldn't be alone I think that's one point to make but the other is that you will after the first week or two and actually the first week is not is more of us it's basically a socialization activity which is just post about yourself tell us about yourself what are you interested in doing tell us about your background and after that it becomes much more academic but you'll find that you will find you'll you'll find a groove that that works with your own circumstances and because it's asynchronous there isn't pressure to be online at the same time as other people I'm just going to show you and keeping up with the readings of course is a big part of it but you'll find that keeping up I think different students have different strategies of what keeping up means I mean I think the bare minimum is reading at least one of the core readings just so you can begin there and onto the discussion forums and some people will say okay I'm going to read two of them and others be over the week we'll we'll begin to say okay I'm going to read a couple of them or read one participate in the forum and then carry on reading and you'll I think you'll you should through your own experimentation and what works for you be able to to see what works yeah I think and that's kind of why we look at of spreading the program because some students do ask why is our online and distance learning program different in in duration to our to our in-person programs and a big element of that is taking into consideration what our students would be doing alongside studying and lots of different commitments that they may have as they're taking our program so it's definitely something that we've kind of considered in our approach so this is what the BLE looks like can you see my screen yes yeah okay good all right so this is what the core module looks like this is from last year last April and so basically everything is here yeah there's a lot of other things going on a lot of announcements events and things and what you'll see here is the calendar and I was kind of showing you that and on one of the slides and that's the date there we've got 13th of course it's different now so you can see that there let me just see what else we've got down here we had an October one as well so I think that's why I'm not in the right place here actually this is what I wanted activities and forums this is where you spend a lot of time you go into the activities and forums and let me show you this schedule this is the kind of schedule one of the questions is about is planning ahead please ignore this we're actually changing this now it's not even in place yet is our is that the activity one is actually weighted five percent it's zero percent five yeah so it's slightly different but it's not too different but this is what you will need at the beginning of this of your basically your your journey on this program is is that all of these modules that you'll take all four of them will have this same format the same kind of schedule and so once you've done one module the core module will tend is the one where you have all the teasing issues then you once you've worked out that this is what is expected you will be able to then start the your first optional module and the second and the third one's knowing what to expect different content of course but the same activity structure so this shows you how many days you have to write them they work on them so we'll have start date and then an end date when you need to submit and we tell you when you get your feedback so it is quite structured and you'll know you know what to expect and you can therefore also let me just show you one of these as well so maybe I'll show you a couple of them I'll show you what the access and socialization looks like so basically you can see here we tell you exactly what to do you know this is introduce yourself tell us a bit about yourself and then tells you what to do it's like tell us about your interests and hobbies and how you survived the you know COVID-19 lockdown lockdowns multiple ones we've had and then you go down and you can see here and see people have posted here all right so that's that's what that looks like and then you know we have the other ones which are more I'll do it I'll show you the text critique so you analyze one of these articles and identify its strengths and weaknesses and then you can see here it's it's really broken down and this is where this is our pedagogy we've broken it down we've said you here's what you read you choose one of these two articles and then we we've given you a very structured way of doing it so you you're going to post 300 words on the and share it with your classmates you're going to take the feedback and then you're going to submit a 600 word thing having taken on the feedback so it is showing that it's kind of training you and teaching you how to take advantage of feedback and reflection so that's so that's a peer-to-peer learning you'll get the kind of learning through the feedback from through the marks as well in the feedback so okay so Dara has a question I'm especially interested in social research methodologies it's very relevant my work to what extent our research methodologies taught and which modules are best for research so we have our dissertation mini modules and that's where that is I mean our the other modules are very substantive or theoretical or conceptual so there'll be areas rather than talking about methodologies the dissertation mini modules give you some and at this stage we're not quite there yet with the kind of doing research methodologies and has a lot to do with the ethics and during especially during this time period in terms of getting kind of risk doing the risk assessments and ethical approvals as distance learning students but that all that all happens within the mini modules and as I mentioned to you those mini modules they happen in between the other optional and the core modules so you'll be focused there and there are specific tutors that are working on that as well associate tutors who who would and you you are assigned to supervisors well for the dissertation I forgot to say so you would then be working with someone on your dissertation so we probably just have a few minutes more in case and we could take one more question if anybody has a final question that they'd like to drop in I think maybe one thing as well that might be interesting for you to do is we do have on our website they're not development MOOCs but we do have MOOCs on our website so massive open online courses again they're not exactly the same as the online and distance learning programs but it can give you kind of a dipping your toe into how online and distance learning kind kind of works in some respect so it might be something that you want to look at on our website and as as development studies is such an interdisciplinary kind of area you probably will find that there are a few of the options that we do have on our MOOCs that there will be some overlap with development studies to some extent as well so that might just be something you want to do either just to kind of view it and see I mean I took I took a couple of them when we were in our first lockdown with COVID just so that I didn't go into a Netflix wormhole and never never emerge and I have been out of education for quite some time so I did find that though it said you know it's about two hours a week of your time to do this in about four weeks I found for me it was more like three to four hours at the start and then as I went through I kind of adjusted so it is just something for you to think about in terms of as you'll go through the program you will definitely kind of evolve in terms of your studies and in terms of your approach and in terms of the way you think and then the way you write all those areas yeah you might even be able to balance the Netflix with them I say you know reading as well as we all do so I think there was one last question which was just about uh oh yeah I think you've answered it as well about modules so yeah yeah I mean basically with the modules I mean the main thing is once you've enrolled you the core module is the one you have to do first anyway um and you may be asked at the beginning which ones you want to take but not all modules are offered in the same term so you are given a choice so you basically I think a few weeks um towards the end of the of the module you'll you'll have a choice then to decide on the options great well thank you all for joining us today and thank you so much for an amazing kind of overview and presentation and providing lots of answers to all of the questions I think I definitely heard some takeaways from today's event as well and yeah thank you everybody for joining us we hope this has been helpful to you we hope it's it's kind of made a few things more clearer for you or possibly just solidified some of the information that you'd already received and the decisions that you're making moving forward we will be hosting more general events so again as a online and distance learning student or whether you're a student coming to our in-person programs we would like everybody to attend equally so if there are any other sessions that are more general that you think you want to attend please do feel free and yeah thank you very much for attending today and again thank you for such a wonderful kind of presentation and overview thank you great bye everybody bye everyone