Posted on Wed 25 Jan 2017 at 10:21 by
James Gunther A belated New Year to you all!
The academic year to date has been especially busy and hectic. Initially we saw issues surrounding timetabling; this year the timetabling system changed following student feedback. The new student-led timetabling system allowed more freedom for module choice, as well as no caps on the number of students who could take a module, meaning no limitations on what was on offer to you. There were some teething problems but these were, to our knowledge, resolved promptly by the University, with lessons learned for the next academic year.
Timetabling was a key topic of discussion at the first StARs forum, resulting in commitments to investigate ways in which the system could be further improved for students, with some excellent points and feedback provided by many StARs in attendance. The notes of this meeting can be found on our website. If, however, you know of any ongoing or unresolved issues around timetabling please do get in touch with me as we can work together to try and resolve this. The next StARs forum is on Thursday 2nd February 2017 in EEG087 at 4.30pm, focussing on Personal Academic Tutoring. So make sure you prepare and speak to StARs so they can ask the relevant questions for you!
Our All Student Meeting follows this at 6pm so we’d love you to come to that too – we’ll be updating students on our activities, how we spend our money and asking your questions (there’ll be free food too).
A new addition to this year for StARs was the inclusion of updated training and online workbook to complete. This was added in the hope students would engage with us more and acquire more information to help them with their role. This seems to have been received very positively but we are always looking for more students to start and, more importantly, finish the workbook!
Alongside this the new addition of an online journal, allowing students to feedback directly to the SU about progress, issues and wins giving time for the SU to intervene if necessary. The information provided by StARs so far has proved invaluable to us and the University in improving the student experience.
Coming up we have refreshers week beginning Monday 30th January 2017. This will involve lots of new events both in the daytime and evening. It’s available to all students so make sure you get involved!
Thank you for giving this a read, hopefully it has updated you and will continue to do so throughout the year.
Any questions feel free to ask or just pop in!
Kind regards, keep up the good work
James Gunther