Supporting your success

Support from your whanau, friends, partner, and even older children is an important aspect of being a successful online student.

Do you feel like an expert working your way around the Online Campus yet? If not, don't worry — it won't take you long to catch on. Everyone needs a helping hand now and again, take ours if you need it.

Academic Support

Your online tutor can help you to understand the programme materials, answer questions about your assessments, and help keep you on track with your learning.

They can help you with:

• content support
• general course issues
• assessment support, extensions, progress
• understanding assessment feedback.

Simply email or send a message to your online tutor for help. Meeting regularly with your tutor will help you stay motivated and on track with your learning.

How to book a one-on-one video session with your online tutor

If you would like to chat with your online tutor about any aspect of your study, you can email them or send them a message through our online messaging tool.

Online Learning Support

Online Learning Support can help you with areas of your learning that are not related to the programme content. This might include learning support (strategies to study, support tools to use) but also extend to areas such as pastoral care, taking a break from studies, StudyLink problems, visa questions, and many more. Reach out to your tutor to set up a private session for you.

Learning Differences

Let your tutor or Online Learning Support know if you identify as neurodiverse, are differently abled, or have any learning barriers or difficulties. We can provide extra support or resources for learning and achievement. Together we will work through an individual plan to assist you.

Your Peers

You are not alone in your learning journey. You have the Online Campus community at your fingertips. The other students in the programme are studying the same material as you and may have the answer to your questions. Your peers can be reached by sending a message through online messaging or responding to forum threads and journal entries.

Online Campus technical support

Sometimes technology isn’t playing on your team. If you have any technical issues with the Online Campus learning platform, please email onlinesupport@up.education.

Include as much information as possible: in addition to describing the issue, including what browser you are using, any error messages popping up, and screenshots of the issue. You can also tell them what you have already tried to fix the problem. This information will help the online support team to identify the problem and provide the appropriate support.

Career support and advice

Career Support and Advice is available to you in The Hub, in your programme of learning, please take some time to read over this once your programme of learning has begun.  

The information will help you with valuable job-hunting skills, like CV writing and interview techniques. 
We also offer guidance counsellors to help you on your career path. You don’t need to wait until your programme is complete to contact someone. You may like to plan for your new career or find a new job within your industry that you hadn’t considered before. Please email our dedicated Career and Employment Navigators for our Online Campus: careers@nzma.ac.nz.

To ensure our students get all the support they need while they are studying with us, we follow the TEC (Tertiary Education Commission) guided Literacy and Numeracy assessing. This is diagnostic assessments for all our learners in our Level 3 programmes regardless of age or background. 
We do this to help us to identity any students that are in need of extra support with literacy and numeracy.

These assessments are a way of identifying skills, they are not a test that you pass or fail. The results will have no impact on your programme enrolment or completion.

How does it work?

In the first few weeks of your programme, you will be emailed information about completing these assessments. Please follow these instructions and complete the assessments in the timeframe required. 

Each assessment should take about 1 hour however you are able to take a break and come back to it at a later time, if needed. Set yourself up in a quiet location and ensure all of your responses are authentically yours. The use of AI tools are not permitted as this does not provide a true representation of your current skill set.

At the end of your assessment you will see your results. Please take a snapshot of these and keep these safe for future referral.
You will then receive a follow up email explaining what your results mean and how to reach out if you would like further support.
 
Remember, this IS NOT A PASS OR FAIL assessment. Your goal is to discover where your literacy and numeracy skill levels currently sit so we can provide support if necessary. Your results are private and will be only discussed between you and a member of the NZMA whānau where required.

CLICK HERE to access more information about these important assessments.

When your computer isn’t computing or your Internet connection isn’t connecting, it’s good to know where to turn for help. We recommend that you identify someone or some agency to help if your hardware or software goes a bit sideways.

If the problem appears to be with the Online Campus learning platform in any way, please send an email to onlinesupport@up.education with specific information about the problem. Include screenshots and what you were doing when the problem occurred. Provide your computer set-up details as well, including your computer type and operating system version, and browser type and version.

Also, there are commercial resources available:

• Geeks on Wheels
• Need a nerd

Please make sure you are preventing problems as best you can by managing your computer.

• Reboot every night at least
• Use an anti-virus app
• Learn about cyber-security and how to recognise threats
  • The New Zealand government provides excellent tips to:
    • be cyber safe
    • avoid phishing scams.
  • Follow tips from experts, like techguide.com.

GO TO: Module 6 (Digital Skills Hub) for more information on IT support tips and tricks.  

There are so many ways to find help.

You can reach out to the following people:

• Your tutor – tutors are there to help you stay on track. They can point you to extra learning resources and serve as a first point of contact to direct you to more specific support. You can message or email your tutor.
• Your peers – the other students in the programme are a great resource to turn to for help understanding a topic and finding information. Asking for help will foster connections and friendships. Setting up study buddies or small study groups is a great way to stay current on your studies and get help when you need it.

You can also use the following online resources:

• Use the socials – Facebook community career groups, LinkedIn to connect with the industry, and apps such as Discord and WhatsApp are frequently used by our students within a programme of study. After the programme is completed, it can become a networking group.
• Google it – You may find that after finishing a topic, you crave more information or just don’t feel like you are ready to be assessed on the content. Don’t hesitate to use a search engine to mine the Internet for additional content. 

Online tutorials for learning software applications

The tools of the online trade are software and hardware. Each programme has its own set of requirements. In case you haven’t used some of them before, we’ve provided great learning sources.

GO TO: Module 6 (Digital Skills Hub) for more information on the digital needs of online learning. 

Online resources for learning support