Flying Start

1
Flying Start
Flying start has been running for over 10 years
for mature students prior to enrolment on their
course. The aim of this was to give them the
skills they need and the confidence to be a
successful student at the University of
Northampton. It was felt they would particularly
benefit from the introduction to University
study, as many had been out of study for a while.
However during its time of running and the
success it was felt that the course could benefit
a wider range of new students and especially
other and should be offered to all WP groups.

• 2 day event
• Flying start has been adapted from a 3 day event
  and become school specific. A pilot was run at
  the end of January for the School of Health.
  Students attending the event were from all WP
  categories. Evaluation showed that students
  confidence in their academic ability was raised
  after attending the event.
• Two further School of Health flying starts were
  run in July, attendance for these was lower than
  expected and we are evaluating the possibility
  that this was due to being too far in advance of
  the start date for students. To date around 100
  new students in the School of Health have
  attended flying start.

Online flying start

• Project aims and objectives
• To evaluate and develop CfAP's 'Flying Start'
  programme
• To create an effective online version and
  evaluate its usability among WP students
• Analyse the different WP students experience with
  both the online version and the one or two day
  programme
• To open up the 'Flying Start programme' to the
  majority of new WP students in the first instance

• This has become a development in two stages, the
  first stage is scheduled to go live at the
  beginning of the autumn term. The aim of this
  version is to allow all students who did not
  attend a two day event the opportunity to learn
  the same skills / benefit from the same
  information.
• This is housed on NILE and delivered in a variety
  of ways
• Interactive exercises
• Panopto
• Podcasts
• PDFs
• The second stage is planned to improve and in
  part replace the content of the first stage and
  to be much more interactive.

Conclusion
The time scale of the project has been the
hardest part to manage. The project clearly
underestimated the time involved in meeting with
schools, planning the two day content and also
the development of the online version. All
upcoming flying starts will be evaluated to
ensure the students are benefiting from the new
programmes with particular emphasis on WP
students.