Tuesday 02-01-2018 - 15:51

Your course reps have been busy collecting your views and presenting them to your department, giving you the chance to shape your academic experience.

We spoke to Sam Whelan, course rep for first year Engineering, about his futuristic use of a feedback-collecting robot.

After hearing tales of woe about poor response rates to Student Voice Surveys, I decided instead to use SurveyMonkey's Facebook messenger feature to collect responses. The feature quizzed students using a virtual me, providing answers to over 100 questions. For those who didn't fancy chatting to this virtual self, the survey also integrated a more traditional web-based survey robot. The survey collected plenty of feedback, completely anonymously, which has since been passed on to our lecturers as well as the chair of our recent and very successful Staff-Student Consultative Committee meeting.

Hannah Hawken, course rep for second year Spanish, explains the impact of the feedback she collected.

This term has seen great headway across modules Spanish 2a and 2b thanks to a survey I conducted regarding an issue brought to my attention during the first weeks of my position. Many students feel that more immersion in the Spanish language would be beneficial, particularly in preparation for the year abroad. I recorded how many people would agree to or oppose the culture modules' lectures and seminars being conducted in the Spanish language. Simply asking for a yes or no reply to my email gained a large response from students.

I am working on the valuable comments students have provided me with and am grateful for their contribution to the improvement of the department. Dr Hijano – Director of Studies in the Modern Languages Department – has a copy of the comments from students presented in action points as well as the survey results, showing clearly the favour for Spanish to be implemented in the teaching of cultural modules.