3.2 Learning environments

The sessions you’ll see on your timetable are just a fraction of the time you’ll spend learning - our expectation is that you are (or are becoming) an independent learner and you should expect to take on the responsibility for much of your learning while at Exeter.

Your timetabled sessions are opportunities for you to benefit from the expertise of our academic staff, who are there to inspire and guide your exploration of the module content rather than closely dictate what you need to do to pass your assessments. Most of your work towards achieving the learning objectives of each module will be done during private study time, either alone or in groups, so you’ll need to develop good time management skills to succeed. This way of studying may be quite different to how you’ve learnt in the past, so you might find that it takes a short while to adapt.

You will be expected to attend all of the face-to-face sessions on your timetable, but you’ll also find all the digital resources you need to support your studies on our virtual learning environment (or VLE) - ours is called the ‘Exeter Learning Environment’, or "ELE" for short, and is very similar to this Learn.Exeter platform. When you have activated your Exeter IT account you'll be able to log on to explore at ele.exeter.ac.uk.

You will find that most of our on-campus teaching is focused not on subject “content” but on collaboration with your tutors and your peers - with chances to discuss your independent learning, to get further help with difficult concepts, to interact with guest speakers, or to work on group assessments. We learn best when we learn together: all of our seminars, workshops, lectures and tutorials are designed to maximise the benefits of conversations, collaborations and being part of a diverse learning community. This is also great for making the social connections that are important for your wellbeing - university life is definitely not all about studying! 

Different types of learning environment

If you’re on one of our standard programmes, at undergraduate or postgraduate level, you usually take four modules per term. For most of these modules, you will have access to a set of learning materials and activities within a dedicated, module-specific site on ELE. Here, your module tutor(s) will guide you through, week by week, all of the learning you will be expected to complete. There might be short videos, short recorded presentations, interactive activities and quizzes, along with a range of readings and discussion forums.

Using the arrows or blue bar below, click through the slides to see the different types of learning environment you may experience at Exeter.

We don’t expect you to be spending all of your time working on your credit-bearing modules, however. Both in the HaSS Department and across the university we have been working hard to make sure that you can make the most of all the social, employability and academic skills opportunities available to you, even if you’re studying remotely. You can find out more about this in later sections of this course.