Author: Cristina Leston-Bandeira, c.c.leston-bandeira@hull.ac.uk

JISC e-Learning Activity Area: Technology-enhanced Learning Environments

Higher Education Academy Subject Centre: Sociology, Anthropology and Politics

This case study illustrates...an effect on learning, an effect on student personal development, student satisfaction with e-learning, innovation in learning and teaching, staff satisfaction with e-learning, a positive effect on recruitment, use of resources

Lessons Learned

Summary and Reflection

The learning process develops through the reading of relevant material and the discussion of set topics under the guidance of a lecturer - just as in face-to-face seminars. Students have access to an array of support material, from lecture notes, to online articles and digitised literature. Merlin is particularly effective for this kind of postgraduate teaching, because it has a number of features that promote the creation and maintenance of a learning community. The environment is highly personalised and allows for a high degree of interactivity. It enables effective interactive communication, is simple to use and provides the right tools to give online support for academic work.

In summary we have created and offered students a new approach to teaching legislative studies that fits in with what practitioners in the field have been requesting. A lot has been learned from the experience of setting the MA up and from the e-learning carried out so far. We hope to make further improvements to the existing MA and use this to roll out further online MA courses within the department. In future it is important to integrate the relevant departmental research centres to the related online MA programme as this consolidates and enhances the prestige and background. In deciding whether there is a case for further online MAs the department should be aware of the demand from practitioners in the specialism considered as this is likely to provide the majority of students interested in e-learning.