First Year Student Opinions

The survey of first year student opinions has now closed. Thanks to everyone who responded - we will be using the information gathered to improve our recruitment activity and welcome week for next year.

Sunday Times University Guide

On 21st September 2008, the Sunday Times published it's annual University Guide. As well as its version of league tables (available here), they also provide a short summary of the institution - click here for more.

University league tables

This is an extract of the league tables produced by the Guardian - I've shown the top of the table, the middle where we are (which shows an improvement from the previous year) and some of our obvious competitors.

The Guardian table is compiled using metrics for: teaching quality; feedback as assessed by students in the NSS; spending per student; staff-student ratio; job prospects; value added and entry qualifiactions.

More details on the methodology are available.

1	Oxford
2	Cambridge
3	London School of Economics
4	Warwick
5	St Andrews
6	Imperial College
7	UCL
8	SOAS
9	Edinburgh
10	Loughborough
56	Birmingham City
57	Oxford Brookes
58	Glamorgan
59	Gloucestershire
59	Ulster
61	Bangor
62	Central Lancashire
63	Brighton
63	Bradford
65	Bath Spa
66	UWE Bristol
67	Staffordshire
68	Queen Margaret
69	Aberystwyth
70	St Mary's UC, Twickenham
71	Anglia Ruskin
72	Sunderland
73	Portsmouth
74	Worcester
75	Coventry
76	Northumbria
77	UWIC
78	Sheffield Hallam
79	Northampton
80	Chester
81	Teesside
82	De Montfort
83	Swansea
84	Newport
85	Thames Valley
86	Salford
87	Chichester
88	Kingston
89	Canterbury Christ Church
89	Huddersfield
91	Bedfordshire
92	Manchester Met
93	Leeds Trinity & All Saints
94	Marjon (St Mark and St John)
95	Cumbria
95	Winchester
97	Leeds Met
98	Derby
99	Swansea Met
100	Hertfordshire
105	Abertay Dundee
113	Wolverhampton

National Student Survey

Results of the national Student Survey have now been published - the responses are made by students completing their awards, unlike our own Viewfinder which is for students in earlier levels of awards. The results can be found at Unistats

Student Views on Plagiarism

Another video from the Higher Education Academy looks at student views on plagiarism. We didn't get time last week to cover this subject, but will run a sesion during the year on this very important topic.

Student Views on Assessment and Feedback

This is the video from the Higher Education Academy that John used in the awaydays relating to assessment feedback.

Gathering staff opinions

A vision of students today

This the video I used in my presentations last week

A longer lecture, also by Michael Welsch of Kansas State University, A Portal to Media Literacy, is also worth watching.

Helicopter parents

One thing that came out of one of our awaydays was the need to engage with parents at open days. This was a very timely comment, as parents can have a huge impact on the choices that their children make. Some of the suggestions were that we should provide separate sessions for parents at open days, which could focus on the issues they are interested in, eg student finance and employability, while prospective students are shown around faciltities.

The Guardian published an article about the influences parents have on young adults, not just students, and describes how some organisations are dealing with this phenomenon.

Managing Student Expectations

There's a thought provoking article in this week's Times Higher (or THE as it's now called). Available to download from here.

Staff awaydays

Hi - thanks to everyone who atended the awaydays last week (one comment I had wa sthat we were not really "away", but at least we all spent some time away from our offices and labs!).

Feedback has ben generally really positive, and you've provided me with plenty of suggestions of other things you would like to see in future development sessions.

This week, as well as being around to welcome new students, I'll be compiling all the reponses you've given regarding Viewfinder. Once I've gone through them, I'll put together an action plan which I'll circulate.

Welcome

This blog is written by Mike Hamlyn, Faculty Director for Teaching and Learning in the Faculty of Computing Engineering and Technology at Staffordshire University. It's for me to point to items fo interest that I find, and for staff and students to share their comments.