Engaging students to establish peer connections in the online environment

Amongst the challenges higher education faced during the Covid-19 pandemic was the induction of students at the beginning of their academic career. Remote induction is potentially isolating, with limited access to meet peers, university staff and connect with the university campus environment. An online team building exercise was developed by the Teesside University Minecraft Education Edition Working Group with the aim of addressing limited access to peers and teaching staff. This was also taken as an opportunity to give students a taste of the Teesside University Campus.

A challenge was created where students were required to work in teams to cross a pit of Magma on the Teesside University campus and was hence called The Magma Challenge. This resource was designed as a facilitator to allow students to engage with one another rather than be in competition with each other. It allowed students to establish peer and staff connections in an online environment where traditionally none would have been established. Feedback from students demonstrated this this challenge helped them establish easy conversations with other students on their course as well as familiarising with at least one of their teaching staff – a task difficult to establish in a fully online environment.

Although this was developed as a tool during the pandemic, the principles of using an online team building exercise to enhance a students’ interaction with other students persists to help those with a purely online learning experience where connection to their peers, University staff and their learning environment is more complicated to establish.