What I learnt last week

As Director for Students in the Biology Department at the University of York I am often in mix listening to students, answering queries and providing advice.

Last week was the start of term and also a four day week.

On Tuesday we set out to poll as many @BiologyatYork students as possible and find out how they were. @Mentimeter is particularly useful in this. Within 36 hours we had responses from over 600 students. This is about half of our undergraduate, postgraduate and research student population.

Following on from this, all students had the opportunity to suggest ways we could help. A simple Google form is a good way to collate this. We also included the results from the @Mentimeter survey for each of our student cohorts. That meant students knew how their cohort was feeling. For some students, they would know they were not alone.

The feedback we received fell into three groups. The first was about information provided by @UniOfYork. We re-directed this along the appropriate channels. The second batch was shaped into advice and guidance for lecturers. This meant that students will get what they requested, and staff will also know that they are delivering what the students need right now. The third area covered key topics we can come back to in the next few weeks.

All this was all completed by Friday afternoon.

Usually we take much longer over student feedback following a variety of guidelines and established practice. We ask student questions we have used before, rather than giving them free range. In fact we often ask the same questions many times across different modules. We also pester them to respond and wait weeks to get as many responses as possible. 

This time the turnaround was much faster. The feedback looped closed and we can track this as we move forward. We will check in with the students very soon.

We have never asked students about their wellbeing at the same time as asking for feedback. It was striking that students focussed in on the key issues with such clarity. All this feedback was constructive and reasonable. A consequence of this was that it was straightforward to put in place a response and share this with colleagues.

This demonstrates what you can do in abnormal circumstances. One key lesson is that if we can do this now, we can do this at any time.

I'll be back in the mix next week.