Increased student opportunities and staff engagement
Q19 is a difficult topic to improve upon, student confidence often requires more than a change in procedure or policy. Bangor University, School of Law’s increased engagement with their students combined with initiatives focussed on providing opportunities and information support for their students seems to however have had the desired positive effect.
Some of these initiatives include a Employability Committee focussed on providing their students with the best employment opportunities with firms such as Hill Dickinson and Hugh James offering students placements. The web page for work placements provides student case studies so the students can relate, helping to build confidence and trust in the initiative.
Increased staff interaction and engagement outside of the typical teaching week, has been another aspect the School has instilled. Staff train and act as judges for student moot court competitions, as well as taking students on trips to destinations such as the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Strasbourg and Brussels amongst others. Creating these extra opportunities and ensuring staff are engaging with students throughout their University life, is surely an aspect that has helped the students to feel confident in their environment.
Bursary Scheme
One other aspect that is likely to been a significant factor in improving the overall satisfaction, is the bursary scheme. This scheme provides students with the opportunity to apply for financial aid to help cover the costs associated with work experience. The scheme measures the anticipated expenses, student’s financial situation and anticipated value of work experience in order to ensure that the students most in need, are awarded funding. This helps to ensure that work experience opportunities are a possibility for all students and surely a significant factor in helping to improve the overall student experience.
Student Experience Success
Student engagement and improving upon the support offered to students, are key themes throughout all of the School of Law’s initiatives. This underlines how successful initiatives can be, as long as they are focussed towards the students needs.
Each initiative has had a positive and measurable impact on the student experience resulting in much improved NSS scores, indicating that the students have recognised and appreciated their efforts.
I will be continuing to post further Student Experience Success articles, each looking at a different initiatives and ideas that have helped to improve the student experience. These are intended to be helpful and interesting articles that provoke further conversation on the initiatives raised, so please feel free to open up further discussion using the comments field at the bottom of each article.
