BIG BLOG NEWS

Thanks for dropping by today. This is a news day, but tomorrow we'll be back in business with the this week's topic, how to deal with stress.

I've been really pleased by the response this blog has received. Students are asking questions about the content, getting in touch with me about the blog and responding to the blog by asking questions. I urge all students to join this blog as a follower, and keep up with what is going on here. This is a good contact point for you in this programme, even if you just need to be redirected when you get lost or encouraged when the programme seems long. When you join it helps both of us. It helps you step out from the crowd of students, especially if we correspond, but it also reinforces the idea that skills management is important for DL students.

As I gain experience in working with the blog, I want to take a multi-media approach to this blog. I want to make this blog more exciting, and still focus on skills management. I think we can do this together, and again I'm open to suggestions from students and staff (email me, drop an idea into a post). Learning should be fun as well as work, help me to make it fun!

Now, a few weeks into the "What is this Blog", I'm fine tuning the organization of the topics slightly. Right now, I would particularly like to extend an invitation to the students to suggest helpful blog topics. Nothing is off the table, if you don't know a full stop from a comma, now is the time to discuss it. You can post them here on the blog or send them to ulsmdltutor@le.ac.uk. A small housekeeping matter as well, if you require a response within the three working days, please email me at ulsmdlttutor@le.ac.uk. What is this blog is hosted through Google, and I want students to know if they wish to reach me within 3 working days that my U of Leicester address is the best, reliable route.

So now, these are the bigger topics the blog covers:

Topic One - Blogs Working on Thinking Critically in DL at University of Leicester programme - Tutors and professors talk about the importance of thinking critically in order to achieve the goals of in the programme. This is about how to incorporate this approach into your work.

Topic Two - Grammar Matters - With the introduction of the word of the week, I found that students are energized to talk about how to find the right words in the right place. A lot of this boils down to grammar and language. Here, we will deal with grammar in a bit more detail than in the word of the week. Special tips for our ESL students will be included from a variety of sources.

Topic Three - Referencing Matters/Do it Right Once - Everything about how to reference, how to collect good and reliable sources for your papers and how to make those sources work for you in your papers.

Topic Four - A Writing Affair - How to organize, understand and work with all aspects of writing essays and assignments in the programme.

Topic Five - Stress, Work and Getting through the Programme - I think this is self explanatory. Topics, such as working to schedule on exams belongs here as one of those things that we need to do to to do to "Get through the programme", but it isn't really a weekly topic.

That's all until next time.

KB