The first semester of the 2024/25 academic year has been eventful. As the representative for the School of Society and Culture, which has close to 100 individual course reps, it has been a pleasure collaborating with representatives from various programmes to improve their academic and student experience.
Early in the semester, we ran school-wide drop-in sessions for all reps to discuss their collected feedback from individual courses and contribute ideas and strategies for improving student experiences overall.
Most encouraging was the willingness of course reps across various programmes to unite, realising that problems affecting their course may affect other disciplines, too. Accordingly, measures have been implemented to bring together feedback from representatives across the School to highlight repetitive issues. This was particularly helpful regarding student experiences being negatively impacted by staff changes and subsequent module deliveries.
Other feedback that we successfully brought to the attention of Programme Leads, the Head of School, and Faculty Teaching and Learning Quality Committees included:
- Concerns from 2nd and 3rd-year students regarding dissertation plans being disrupted by staff changes
- The need for better communication regarding redundancies and staff turnover
- Better efficiency in collecting individual module feedback throughout the semester
- Communication regarding new extenuating circumstances policies.
All issues and ideas were addressed directly, with solutions and recommendations provided by both students and faculty members.
Next semester, the course reps and I will continue to push for a more transparent approach to communicating and implementing staff and module changes. Alongside new measures to collate feedback school-wide, there are plans to build a stronger community between students and faculty through inter-programme groups such as the School of Society and Culture film club, which synchronises with modules from across the school and is led by both students and lecturers. Students within the school have also registered their interest in acquiring Kanopy, an academic video streaming service that offers helpful educational videos, documentaries, films, and TV shows. The process is ongoing, and we hope the school will be able to deliver the service soon.
I look forward to continuing our work with course reps, the student union, and faculty members in Semester 2.