I hope you’re settling into the new term and enjoying being back. All through the year, but especially over holiday periods, teams are hard at work making changes to improve your student experience and the campus environment.
For example; we recently completed the refurbishment of the Founder’s Reading Room, which means we now have 1350 individual library study spaces across campus. Your feedback also told us that you’d like it to be easier to obtain short-term extensions, and as a result of this, our extensions policy was updated last term. You can now self-certify up to twice in an academic year for five day extensions.
We’ve also seen departments acting on feedback and in the Earth Sciences department and English department, assessments have been more spread out across the year to help you manage your workload. And in Geography, students have had the opportunity to meet for dedicated one-to-one feedback sessions to go over comments from exams.
Changes like these are a direct result of listening to your feedback and focusing on the areas that matter to you. One of the main ways that we gather feedback is through student surveys.
From tomorrow and over the next few months, you will have a chance to use your student voice in a survey which asks you to evaluate your time here so far. Every student is being asked to join in. By taking part you can help us to continue to focus on what matters to you; what works, what needs to change and what needs to improve. These surveys are also critical for informing how Royal Holloway is seen externally, and help prospective students when deciding what university to go to.
I’d like to thank you in advance for your participation in our surveys and I look forward to reading your thoughts.
Paul
Professor Paul Layzell
Principal