Thank you to all students who took the time to complete one of our surveys last term. Your Student Voice is incredibly important to us as an institution and we appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts and have your say.

Check out some of examples below of actions we’re taking or changes we’re making across the University in response to your feedback.

Professional Academic Skills 

  • We’ll work across the Centre for Foundation Studies and faculties to continue to raise awareness of the ASk team, particularly for foundation and first year students who had less awareness of our services. 
  • We are currently working to gain more visibility for our face-to-face services on all sites with more prominent locations and better advertising.  
  • We will also be working with student partners to improve our social media reach and impact.  

Student Services 

Induction/Welcome

Following an unexpectedly high number of students attending our International Welcome Event on 1 October which led to long queues, we have made the following changes for future events:  

  • We have streamlined the enrolment/visa process. 
  • We recruit more staff volunteers and student ambassadors for every International Welcome event to support with answering questions and preparing students for each step of the process.  
  • The times of subsequent events were also extended (with last entry at 3pm to ensure all students could be seen on the day).  
  • Targeted communications to students are now sent based on their course start date to help spread attendance more evenly.  

To enhance awareness, accessibility, and engagement with induction/Welcome Week, we propose: 

  • Engaging earlier with applicants at applicant day events, providing details about Welcome Week, events, and key information sources. 
  • Refining the timetable by distinguishing between essential and non-essential events while emphasising their importance for networking, meeting staff, and obtaining essential university information. 
  • Providing earlier access to a separate timetable of “essential” events alongside the Student Shout Out programme, to help students plan further in advance and accommodate other commitments. 
  • Reviewing the event offering to encourage attendance, particularly for students with families, other commitments, or commuting challenges. 
  • Offering mini refreshers or catch-up events later in the term, including materials and recordings for those who missed key activities 
  • Develop Best Practice Guides for academic divisions, focussing on student demographics and suggesting appropriate activities, for example, in response to feedback from mature students who felt some activities were immature.  
  • Consider reintroducing a Commuting Student Welcome prior to Welcome Week to support commuting students with a ‘practice run’ for their commute, introduce them to key support available and meet fellow students in a similar position to them.  

Careers and Employability  

  • We are now in discussions with Student Services and CSU regarding holding a part-time jobs fair in Welcome Week and Induction in response to your feedback.  
  • We are currently reviewing efficient processes as part of a Unijob review and we have been discussing proposing to move the restriction of 15 hours to up to 20 hours which many universities have done for their on-campus jobs. This may help to ease the cost-of-living for many students.  
  • Following requests for additional CV support, we have introduced CareerSet – a free CV support tool which is available 24/7, 365 days a year. This is available in addition to our Career Consultant CV appointments.   

Sport and Active Lifestyle 

  • Interdepartmental tournaments is something we will look at holding over the next few years based on student feedback. 
  • We will continue to encourage teams/clubs to run early evening training sessions to ensure commuting students can attend.  
  • Every year we review our Welcome Week programme to ensure we’re running a range of sessions for all students. The number/type of sessions we can hold is restricted due to other activities already taking place in facilities, ie the Sports Hall. 
  • We will continue to raise awareness of all SAL sessions and the Athletics’ Union, emphasising that all sessions and clubs/teams are open to students studying at all levels.  
  • We are currently looking at what partnerships can be formed with students studying on our sports coaching programme. 
  • We will continue to encourage clubs/teams to run sober socials so all students can attend.  

Chaplaincy  

  • This year we will continue to hold a variety of social events to give students the opportunity to make new connections 
  • We will continue to raise awareness of the Chaplaincy team through increased promotion across a range of channels, including Student Shout Out.  
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