Title: Improving the online PGT experience by developing regional Alumni and student networks: Lessons from the Usher Masters Alumni (UMA) network in Africa

Author: Paineto Masengere, Emilie Mcswiggan, Nynke Halbesma and Clare Bukirwa

Theme: Partnerships

The online postgraduate teaching (PGT) programs at the University of Edinburgh (UoE) attract annually over 600 students from all over the globe who present with distinct cultural backgrounds. The diverse student population of these programmes offers a great opportunity for peer exchange and learning. Students and alumni who have a similar cultural backgrounds tend to also share similar expectations, challenges, and approaches to studies, which sometimes may not be obvious to other students and staff from elsewhere. Those of us driving the current project are African students, but similar challenges have also been observed by students from other backgrounds (such as small islands and resource-poor settings).
We are expanding the existing Usher Masters Alumni network, by creating a regional hub in Africa, in order to provide an opportunity for African students and alumni to share mutual learning and help to build each other’s knowledge and capacity to address the issues which are unique to them, both during their studies and afterward. 
We are final-year online Masters of Public Health students from Uganda, who have worked together with members of the Usher Masters Alumni Network to create this as a staff-student-alumni collaboration. We received support from the UoE students’ experience grant to pilot the formation and operation of the regional UMA-Africa network. We will bring together students and alumni from various African countries, providing opportunities to meet online and face-to-face with like-minded people. The proposed alumni network aims to support students and alumni alike with opportunities for lifelong learning, mentoring, and career development. This will include alumni mentoring current and prospective students; making connections with potential employers in relevant fields; and providing transferable ‘real world’ skills to address frequent student requests for such opportunities. The UMA-Africa network will act as a pilot to test how feasible these regional context-specific networks are, and what needs to be done to make them more effective and sustainable in other contexts. 
These student-driven networks and regional hubs, which continue to build relationships and learning beyond graduation, may be valuable across the University – by sharing our learning, we aim to encourage others who may be interested in developing their own.