December 11, 2013, by Helen Whitehead

Advent calendar #11: A student’s view

Fouzia Nawaz offers the student view on our Sustainability online course:

Online learning tools are popular among students as it is easy to access and offer flexibility for the learner to complete the tasks in their own time. Last spring as part of Nottingham Advantage Award, University of Nottingham launched an online course on “Perspectives on Sustainability” open to all the students. Being an international Postgraduate (PhD) student myself, I joined the online course (OL) and have found the experience very interesting and encouraging because, firstly, it was a great opportunity to engage with interactive tools of learning like YouTube links, media files, PPT and word documents etc and, secondly, it also provided me with a platform to engage in discussion with other international and home students which to me are an additional feature to support diverse learning styles and motivates me to learn effectively.

In terms of time, the engagement with the activities was worth it and has a long way to go because the course was designed to suit the needs of diverse adult learners. In short I would say the materials developed for the course were self-explanatory and well researched. Above all the course material was made accessible in PDF formats which can be downloaded to read. I specifically liked the historical background of sustainability efforts and articulation of the concept with other disciplines, which I have never thought of before. Therefore I would recommend especially international students to sign up for the course and get the benefit of such an opportunity.

The University of Nottingham MOOC Sustainability, Society and You starts on January 6th and you can sign up now for free on the FutureLearn website.

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