March 23, 2016, by Ryan Neal
Student Engagement Sessions
Two Student Engagement Sessions titled ‘Introducing your new Student Service Centres’ took place on Wednesday 2 March and Friday 4 March. These were a chance for all students to find out more about the upcoming changes and to ask any questions that they may have had.
The sessions were led by Chris Hulse, Director of Student Services, and Clare Gough, Director of Service Development, which are the two main branches within the new Student Services department. Student Experience Specialist, Charlotte Owen, was also in attendance to give a demonstration of MyNottingham, the new online self-service portal that will be launched along with the new Student Service Centres.
The programme for these events can be found below, along with the presentation slides:
- Presentation
- MyNottingham demo
- Open floor Q&A
- Informal discussion/meet and greet
The slides from these sessions can be found on the Project Transform Workspace (login required).
The overall feedback has so far been positive, with students who had expressed concerns agreeing that they could see the positive impacts of the project. However, a few concerns remain and these are listed below, along with their corresponding course of action:
Will student support seem ‘faceless’? How will we build a relationship with members of staff?
The new systems underpinning these changes mean that staff in service centres will all have access to a student’s historical data (to an extent that’s relevant to their role). This will provide them with insight into the history of a student’s interaction with the University and any prior problems or issues that a student may have had. It has been recognised that the close relationship between staff and students is one of the core strengths of the current model, and this will need to be addressed as we move into the new organisation. There will be continuous efforts to identify the best way to preserve this relationship.
Student Services staff will be based both in the new Student Service Centres and also in School locations. Service Centres will be the first point of contact for students. Student pastoral support, for example, will still be offered by School/Faculty staff, but you will be able to access this support through the new Student Service Centres.
Will academics be trained on the new system?
The precise training plan for academics has not yet been confirmed but there will certainly be support in place to guide academics on using the new system.
How have students been engaged with the project so far?
A number of recent University of Nottingham graduates work on the project, and current students have been consulted through surveys, workshops and feedback sessions. There is also a group of Student Ambassadors that work with the project, providing vital input from a student perspective at various points of the process, and they will also contribute to the system testing. Finally, the SU have been heavily involved throughout and the officers sit on various project groups.
Will students be able to provide feedback on the new centres/services to allow for future improvements?
There will certainly be the provision for not only students but admin and academic staff to provide detailed feedback on the new services and centres. The new organisation includes a Customer Services workstream, which will be working closely with students, admin and academic staff to collect feedback and enhance the services provided.
How will staff in Service Centres be able to deal with very specific questions about individual courses?
Many of the staff moving into the Student Service Centres will be coming from Schools and will therefore bring existing knowledge with them. There is currently an ongoing knowledge collection exercise to ensure that this knowledge is captured and recorded for reference moving forward. Each Service Centre will maintain close relationships with Schools to ensure that knowledge is shared and maintained in an up-to-date manner.
If you have any further questions about Project Transform, don’t hesitate to contact us at projecttransform@nottingham.ac.uk. To remain up-to-date with Project Transform news, you can subscribe to this blog by entering your email address into the bar in the top right corner of this page.
“Student pastoral support, for example, will still be offered by School/Faculty staff, but you will be able to access this support through the new Student Service Centres.”
Please could you expand on how students will access pastoral support, provided by staff in Schools, from the new Student Service Centres?
Hi Tay,
Thank you for your question.
Pastoral support will be physically based in the School/Faculty but students will have the option to book appointments through the Student Service Centres.
I hope this answers your question.
Best wishes,
Ryan
As Transform hurtles on toward providing us all with an unknown future, seemingly ditching the baby, the bathwater and the bath as it goes, I’m saddened by the lack of comments on most of these Transform Blog posts. And by comments I mean direct challenges to the warped logic and disingenuous language of these ‘communications.’ The cognitive dissonance in the post above, and many others, is staggering. Where’s an Orwell when you need one?
In this post, for example, we are told, “It has been recognised that the close relationship between staff and students is one of the core strengths of the current model, and this will need to be addressed as we move into the new organisation.” When was this ‘recognised’? And by whom? From memory, this is exactly one of the recurring criticisms of Transform staff have raised since the very beginning (the other issue being the limited nature of the actual questionnaire, which actually ignored the actual answer to this question in favour of centralisation). Recognition, it transpires, translates as ‘There will be continuous efforts to identify the best way to preserve this relationship’ and the way this will happen is simply because staff ‘moving into the Student Service Centres will be coming from Schools and will therefore bring existing knowledge with them.’
There is so much wrong here that I can hardly type. Why effectively destroy what is an acknowledged strength of the current model? Why not identify and address the weaknesses of the current model? And in terms of staff mobility, the use of the word ‘move’ hides a multitude of sins, too. The post suggests staff are moving willingly to positions of their choosing but this is simply not true. From what I can see, the processes for ‘moving’ staff have been unfairly stressful because these moves are forced.
I have been at this university since the late ’90s, and I know well the kind of knowledge admin staff carry with them. The presumption that this knowledge will ‘move’ with staff is a half-truth; it is not just what is known but how this knowledge is accessed and engaged with: students with real and serious problems need support from people – not via email or on the telephone -but face-to-face. I know students will be able to access support on an appointment basis but how long do you think students with problems are willing to wait? Without doubt, students will seek immediate emotional support from admin and academic staff in schools and departments.
In short, the new system will actively destroy the very relationship you (claim) to want to preserve; it will also put individuals in schools and departments under greater pressure, too.
Finally, the hard-earned ‘local’ knowledge of staff exists because many administrators have remained incredibly loyal and committed to schools and departments because they, like students, have been invested in them. Once excised from a relationship with a school/department, it’s staff and student cohort, what will happen then? Sadly, it all seems dehumanising and instrumental, and a sure fire way to further cripple staff morale, and speaks to an ongoing erosion of departmental identities. I suspect many excellent staff will leave – the very people with the ‘knowledge’ the university ‘recognises’ it must save.
I’m sure I’ll be accused of being ‘against change’ which is not the case at all – I’m all for it; especially change for the better, change that respects people as much as systems. Yes, Saturn has long been awful and of course systems needed an overhaul but I fear that a focus on ‘the students’ journey’ – why is everything a ‘journey’ these days? – has obscured from view an absolutely crucial element in any student’s time at university – and that is the people who work here.
Hi Mark,
The close relationship between staff and students has been addressed by the new Student Services organisation and is something that they are all conscious of as they establish their new ways of working. Preserving this relationship is going to be a challenge but the fact that the team is comprised of colleagues who are highly invested in the University and the service that we offer to our students will be a significant advantage in this respect. The team will also be working very closely with Schools in order to maintain School-specific expertise and encourage the preservation of this relationship. Many of the new Student Services and External Relations team members will continue to have a close working relationship with Schools and academics. The honest answer is that this is going to be one of the more significant challenges that we are presented with and it will take some time to understand precisely how we preserve this relationship as we transition to the new ways of working. But it is something that the Student Services team is aware of and something that they will be working very hard to address.
We will also be doubling the provision of welfare support at a local level. APM 3-4 welfare support roles will increase from 10 to 20 and be based in Schools/Faculties, increasing support to both staff and students and helping to strengthen this relationship.
Giving students the ability to complete administrative processes online is not about taking face-to-face support away from students, but more about offering support in a wider range of easily accessible formats. Students will still be able to walk into Service Centres and get immediate support from a member of staff.
Project Transform has always taken a people-centred approach to change. As you correctly point out, simply optimising our systems would not have been sufficient. We have created one Student Services organisation in order to bring all of our vast knowledge into one location and share it across the University, ensuring that our students receive a consistently excellent experience.
We would be very interested to meet with you in order to further discuss how we best preserve the relationship between staff and students. Please do contact us at projecttransform@nottingham.ac.uk if you would be interested in doing so.
Best wishes,
Ryan