After the 2 staff sessions, I had sessions with 2 groups of course reps from across the School. Again they were primed as to the purpose of the meetings and what we would be covering and they all came with some really good ideas. (There is a caveat to the info below that these are, by their nature as course reps, very engaged students.)
These were the main themes that came out from the discussions:
- Environment – They wanted spaces that better-facilitated discussion, and had relevant inspirational and informative content on the walls. This also held true for virtual spaces, where they also wanted better access to information. they also wanted the heritage of the School to be more visible which was a really interesting point.
- Teaching – students really valued staff time and interaction and wanted more of it, but also that it was quality time. They were open to blended learning and also more individualised experience of content so they weren’t covering content they already new (specifically at L4). they did underpin the foundation of the School in terms of being very industry-focused to ensure the relevance of degree programmes.
- Assessment – they wanted a ‘sense of purpose’ to assessments articulated as real client projects which we do already but it was clear that they liked having an external locus for assessments as it made it more meaningful to them.
- Support – for academic and well-being they wanted it to be embedded and more visible with regular timetabled sessions.
This gives us some really good info to take back to the staff. the next step is to bring this together to create a vision of what our education will look like and then work out all the ways we might achieve the vision – then pick the ones that will become our strategy.