{"id":1351,"date":"2020-12-28T23:01:22","date_gmt":"2020-12-29T07:01:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/education\/blog\/2020\/12\/28\/teesside-university-welcomes-new-students-in-a-virtual-campus\/"},"modified":"2020-12-28T23:01:22","modified_gmt":"2020-12-29T07:01:22","slug":"teesside-university-welcomes-new-students-in-a-virtual-campus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/education\/blog\/2020\/12\/teesside-university-welcomes-new-students-in-a-virtual-campus\/","title":{"rendered":"Teesside University Welcomes New Students in a Virtual Campus"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A resourceful team from Teesside University in the UK came together to help new students connect during the pandemic using Minecraft: Education Edition. Read how they created a beautiful forum where incoming students could meet and build relationships in this guest post by one of the project\u2019s leaders, Dr. Helen Tidy, Principal Lecturer in Learning and Teaching at Teesside\u2019s School of Health and Life Sciences.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Teaching in the COVID era has led to challenges for all of us in education, whether that\u2019s arranging students in onsite classrooms to conducting meaningful and interactive distance learning experiences. A particular problem facing institutions is how to induct students into their university world safely and securely while still providing opportunities for them to meet other new students to form those start-of-term connections that are so important.<\/p>\n

This was the problem we faced at Teesside University, based in Middlesbrough in the UK. How can we carry out a completely online university induction and still get the students to talk and interact with each other and establish connections? We all know that teaching online can be a challenging experience, with a virtual classroom of students who refuse to turn on their cameras or answer any questions. Traditionally, we do the \u201cgetting to know you\u201d induction session based on some activity or game where the students work in groups to undertake a task. The main aim of the session is remembering classmates\u2019 names and having a giggle. But capturing it in an online environment presents difficulties. And that\u2019s where we thought Minecraft: Education Edition might be the answer!<\/p>\n

Firstly, it\u2019s important to provide some context on how we use Minecraft: Education Edition at Teesside University. We are privileged to have Dr. Helen Carney on our staff, who has been innovating with the use of Minecraft in her teaching for about five years now. Dr. Carney has developed the most wonderful virtual field trip that examines biodiversity using Minecraft: Education Edition, which was used this summer by the British Ecological Society. The field trip allows groups of students to interact with each other and their environment within the virtual world. It is this interaction and innovation that we thought we could utilize in establishing a Minecraft-based induction activity. With those thoughts at the forefront of our minds, we established the Teesside University Minecraft Education Induction Team<\/em>:<\/p>\n