Learning and teaching activities include sessions of different lengths with varying numbers of students and each programme will be a different blend. These can range from lectures with everyone who’s studying the subject that year to seminars and workshops with 20-50. Some of you will also have tutorials where just a handful of students work closely together with a tutor.

You'll have seen some of the learning and teaching rooms in our Return to Campus video. Some disciplines also have specialist areas such as laboratories, studios and simulation suites. We’ll use these places alongside the online environment you are exploring now and, where needed, we’ll also guide your learning with live online and interactive sessions to give you the best possible experience.

Exactly how these elements fit together will be explained by your teaching team, who’ll explain about working and staying in touch. There will be details of teaching sessions, assessments and expectations for how you should study and prepare in between these. You’ll know doubt hear the term independent study and it’s worth thinking in advance about what this means.

Independent study is learning that you do in your own time. Particularly at the beginning of a degree your tutors will specify what it is best to read/view/do as you explore new topics. But it’s important to understand that as you progress through your course you’ll increasingly take responsibility for your own independent study. You’ll build up skills of learning in your subject, you’ll know how to find relevant and reliable materials and map out your own way to understanding. Most of us are now used to Googling the answer to many of our questions but, easy as it seems, it’s often not the best place to start. Your tutors will have pulled together a list of reliable and relevant things for the topics you are working on – and beginning with this is a lot more efficient than trying to sift through millions of hits from the web. There’s more about this on our ways to learn page. Do remember when you’re filling in your calendar to include time for this independent study.