3.4 Student representation and engagement
At the University of Exeter we take student engagement very seriously. We encourage you to get involved in making a positive difference while you’re here, both in terms of your education experience and in your contribution to society more widely. Student engagement opportunities can also contribute towards the Exeter Award and your HEAR (Higher Education Achievement Report). These are great opportunities to enhance your employability.
All students are encouraged to offer in-module and end-of-module feedback. You can also post constructive feedback about a module at any time via an open comment, and then at the end of each module you’ll be asked to provide anonymous feedback via a survey. We take the results of these surveys very seriously, and use them to consider changes to module and assessment design that take students’ experiences fully into account. It’s your chance to influence how we deliver education in Psychology, so please do respond as fully and constructively as you can.
For those of you who want to engage in more regular activity to ensure the student voice is heard, there are two main ways you can get involved: joining a student-staff liaison committee (SSLC), or working with other students and/or staff on a ‘Change Agents’ project.
Student-Staff Liaison Committees (SSLCs)
SSLCs are made up of our two department representatives and several staff, who meet throughout term time to discuss how things are going with your course, and what department events and initiatives that students would like to see.
All students are eligible to apply to be department representatives for your programme, which will open for applications in September. You can see more details here.
If you have ideas about what you’d like to see in the department but don’t want to be a department representative, feel free to pass your ideas on those who do. You can also give feedback during Townhall Meetings, and via Unitu (details below).
Town Hall Meetings
“Town Hall” meetings are an opportunity for students from each year in the department to meet with their Directors of Education, alongside their elected department representatives, and raise queries, issues, and suggestions regarding their student experience. If you have questions during a meeting, feel free to post them on the online Town Hall Padlet board, made available during the meeting, and one of the Directors of Education will respond. These meetings take place three times per year; the dates will be posted in the on the Year One tile of the Psychology ELE Handbooks (set up your IT account to gain access to these) when they are finalised.
Unitu
If you have any feedback or ideas about the student experience within the Psychology Department, you can use Unitu to register them. Unitu is an online feedback platform that publicly collects anonymous student comments, and allows universities to view them in real time, and act on them as soon as possible. Please only post comments directly related to the Psychology department in Unitu; the feedback left here is viewed by Psychology staff, who can only facilitate changes within the department. It’s also worth ensuring any comments posted to Unitu are appropriate for public viewing; anyone who accesses the site can see all feedback that has been left.
‘Students as Change Agents and Partners’ is the University’s philosophy and pathway for empowering students to actively improve the University experience for themselves and their peers. Every change suggested is explored and implemented through an individual project.
Students’ involvement varies in each project; they can either take a leading role in running a project, as a Change Agent, or they can work with staff to deliver a project, as a Partner. Students registered through the scheme receive support and training to effect each change, and are able to develop and demonstrate experience in leadership, teamwork and project management.