I’m Alissa Chohan, your Vice President Education at the Students’ Union (SU) and my primary role is to represent your academic interests. This is done in various ways – through College committees, input into exam and assessment regulations, and working with senior management and staff from across the College to improve the quality of your education.
I also play a key part in the running of the
academic representation system which is led by the SU and involves approximately 300 student reps each academic year. It is a system consisting of course reps, department reps, school reps and then myself. In what has been a challenging year, our reps have done some fantastic work and have made a vital difference to your experience. This includes successfully changing coursework deadlines and increasing accessibility and inclusivity in academic settings, including holding equality and diversity focus groups, introducing pronoun stickers, and providing extra wellbeing support on Moodle pages and within departments. We also support the eight
Student Collectives who act as a strong voice for underrepresented groups on campus, organising events, campaigns and key support networks for students.
This academic year has been incredibly difficult with the ongoing and ever-changing impacts of the pandemic on students, but it has also fast-tracked some key changes to teaching and learning, bringing about some really positive improvements. The vast majority of lectures are now recorded and are accessible at any time, a new accessibility software for online resources is going to be implemented and more efficient online learning resources such as quizzes are now embedded into Moodle. These are just a few examples of the developments that have taken place to improve your teaching and learning over the past few months.
However, it is recognised that improvements still need to be made to online platforms. In the autumn term, we released the
Digital Education Experience 2.0 Student Insight Report, featuring a series of 20 recommendations that were taken to the university to address the areas that needed the most attention and improvement. The College presented some really positive responses, including the fitting of new specialist microphones to improve the sound quality of recorded lectures and developing plans to improve key academic areas, such as the personal tutoring system.
The Academic Rep Conference is an upcoming key event that heavily involves student voice. This will be held completely online this year, but promises to host a series of engaging and thought-provoking sessions on race and inclusivity in universities, the debate around tuition fees, a joint honours focus group and a skills development workshop providing guidance after graduation. These events will be open to all students and more information on how to get involved will be available shortly. We’re also working on two upcoming reports that will be influenced heavily by student voice; a Student Insight Report into joint honours support for students and a
Housing Policy Inquiry that our SU President, Kate Roberts, is working hard on.
These incredibly valuable reports, as well as key developments that have taken place this year, would not be possible without the input of your student voice helping us to better understand the often complex and intricate challenges you face throughout your university experience, as well as allowing us to celebrate the various successes across the College. To focus on the areas that matter to you, we need to hear from you, so please do
get in touch with anything that I can help you with.
Another way you can use your student voice is through
completing your student survey. These surveys are one of the main ways that the College and Students’ Union gather feedback to inform changes that improve your student experience.
Alissa Chohan
Vice President Education – Students’ Union