Since the COVID-19 outbreak, student support within Further and Higher Education has undoubtedly been tested. There have been times when we have all experienced uncertainty as we continue to experience the current state of flux. Because of this shift, we must endeavour to question the best possible ways to reach out and support our students. The taken for granted face-to-face opportunities to build relational care have now been absent for some time. Resulting in a time for creative thinking and innovative forms of communication.

Whilst the crisis has demonstrated the potential of online learning, it has however not been free of its limitations. The transition to home learning became reliant on effective digital connection, equipment and more importantly individual digital literacies. At Avanza Training Academy in Malta, we felt it was important to uphold complete transparency with our students, and so, together we collectively developed innovative ways of maintaining effective lines of communication. This was an important objective, as the idea of fostering a learning community remained important to Avanza, even though we remained distanced.

We have all grown accustomed to the importance and value of how technologies can deliver and support course content. For some students the flexibility of being able to record, and play-back sessions were the advantages of asynchronous learning, however,  the majority of students missed the emotional and relational importance of face-to-face synchronous learning.

Since the pandemic outbreak, Avanza Training Academy has taken time to re-evaluate what student support means. Apart from providing optional workshops concerning interpersonal skills, digital/information literacies and organisational life skills, we also took a deeper look at the conversations and communication we have with our students.

“Successful and unsuccessful people do not vary greatly in their abilities. They vary in their desires to reach their potential”

- John Maxwell

Avanza felt it was important to restore a sense of normalcy. The advantage of being a relatively small institute meant we had the resources and time to devise consistent informal online chats, group meetings where students still had opportunities to meet and discuss issues outside of the course content. As a group, we faced COVID-19, we named it and chose support over rigour, students were provided with extra lessons, one-to-one online support, mentoring and clarification. Through this experience, we have preserved our learning community. Lessons have been learnt along the way and we are now looking forward to supporting our students’ transition back to the academy. In doing so, Avanza is proud to present their new student support services, which have been designed to address the social, emotional, psychological and physical effects of being at home for this period of time.

We look forward to welcoming back our community and potential inter/national students who are considering studying with us.

Join us, choose from our portfolio of vocational courses and advance your career with Avanza Training Academy!

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