SAUL SSEKADDE
Am saul ssekadde, a first year student pursuing my masters in management at Derby university, deep down I feel that it’s a pleasure to run as an online officer at a prestigious university in the UK.
As a student from a third world country, I understand the challenges of online studies, we only choose to go only line because the environment or circumstances around us are not enabling for us to settle for our studies, imagine looking for better networked places whenever you have to attend class, missing your nice lectures because there are emergencies in the hospital and your role is key, imagine staggering around looking for a better position to be able to listen to your lectures without interruptions, those are some of the dilemmas we face when studying online, with such background I therefore highly think that I can advocate for the online learners because I understand their struggles, I understand their challenges.
I intend to focus on these areas;
- Advocate for more time allocated to modules, as students studying on line, comprehension is very different from students attending physically, remember we have assignments to undertake in between the module and study material which should be well read and understood, against that background, I will advocate for more time given to students studies on line for better results.
- Request for more tool to guide in online studies, more platforms should be added on, for example twitter, whatsapp among others, time management apps should also be promoted, this is very crucial given the fact that we live in different time zones, many students miss out on the lectures because are unable to match with the right UK time, if we have reminder apps and other tools this will be more important in facilitating online studies.
- Creating more accessibility to online library, many time students fail to reach out on the online library or materials because of unnecessary beauacracies, others are not even aware about its existence because the university hasn’t publicized it enough, this continues to affect online learners especially those from the third world countries.
- Advocating for conferences, it is important for the university to put up conferences where students should attend physically for social interactions, online learning keeps us in isolations, I will therefore advocate for this platform to allow online learners an opportunity to meet and interact with fellow students.
Am very confident that I can steer this role to success, I have worked in third world country, I have seen the challenges of studying while you have to attend to a patient, am a man of integrity, I promise to serve if given an opportunity.