Making contact with the students

I received the latest definitive list of students at the end of the day yesterday, so the first task today was to make contact with them. As usual, the list was lacking some essential details, and some of the details there were wrong! I went down the list of cellphone numbers and called anyone I hadn't heard from, or who didn't have an e-mail address listed. It was a nice experience - makes the students into real people!

The next step was to create records for the students on the database I use (a Filemaker relational database). It makes it so much easier to manipulate the information later on. Once they were there, I could allocate them to buddy groups (and one of the students had already told me on the phone he'd have to come right at the end, so I could put him in group 6), and then export their e-mail addresses to an e-mail list.

Then I created the text of a 'Welcome' e-mail (see next post), and sent it off. And, as it happened, just before I sent it off I got a call from yet another person who wanted to join us! It'll be like this right until we get going.

The state of play right now is that there are 19 students who've received the 'Welcome' e-mail. I'm currently treating 7 of them as provisional, since I have reasons to suspect that they might have changed their minds about studying on the course. There's another one student who's probably married to someone I have been in touch with. I haven't included her on the list yet, but she is probably a definite. I'll put her in a different group from her husband. I don't think they'll both be able to be on line at the same time, which will make Course Meetings interesting. They live in Partille, though (near Gothenburg for the non-Swedes), and there's a strong organisation of study centres in that part of the world, so there's a good chance they'll be able to find an alternative way in.

I'll be in touch with them again after the weekend, with exact details of the time they need to turn up on 7th February. That gives me a chance to refine the lists a little more, as people get in touch with me.

I've deliberately left the whole question of research into the course out of the picture at the moment. This 'Welcome' e-mail is long and complicated enough as it is, and I don't want to confuse matters in the students' minds! I'll bring up Alexandra's research in a separate mail next week.