As academic experience officer my two biggest aims in this role would be to improve student services that are currently provided by the university as well student wellbeing.
In order to improve students over all wellbeing Id like to be able to help change the extension rules so when a student cites mental health issues as a reason they no longer need to try and prove it to the university. As poor mental health isn’t something you can provide evidence for and realistically this rule shouldn’t exist. I’d also implement changes within mental health services that the university currently offers by maybe hiring extra personal who can go through the requests being out in by students as students shouldn’t have to wait up to 6 weeks or more to receive help its far too long and the demand is high, but the university hasn’t made any adjustments to this. Especially since in the pandemic more and more people have suffered with poor mental health and students should be getting the help that they need as soon as possible.
The university libraries space isn’t being utilised properly as many people are reserving areas in the library and not showing up which is taking away space from people who come to library and struggle to find any space to actually work in. Making changes to the library booking system so if people don’t show up within 15 minutes of booking the space it becomes free for others, so students have to declare if they’ve actually show up or not rather than not showing up and someone else not being able to use the free space. Another way to combat the fullness of the library would be to open up some of other rooms around campus for people to study in when seminars aren’t taking place and show times when rooms are available.
The pandemic has heavily affected education for students and many students do not feel as if learning is consistent as not all lectures or even courses have a standard practise with online learning. However, getting lectures to record all online lectures and seminars even when they’re live so students can go back and access the materials even in person prerecord the lectures. Would be beneficial to students as then they’ll be able to have access to the materials and the lectures notes whilst they speak during the sessions. Even though students want to keep some aspects of blended learning it’d be beneficial to offer some in person voluntary sessions for students who benefit from being able to go in and seeing their tutors in person. Lectures should request for the books on the reading list to be able to be accessed online or in person by the library if it’s not accessible it should be removed from the reading list. And replaced with something students can actually access which would be more beneficial to them.