Earlier this year, over 3,000 final year students completed the National Student Survey. The results were published nationally today and we want to take the opportunity to say thank you for the feedback given through the survey. We are working through the data for each course, each department and for the University overall but we can already see a number of helpful themes emerging.  

We have focused a lot on improving personal tutoring, study spaces, access to course-specific facilities and the way that we act on your feedback over the last few years. You have told us that we are making good progress in these areas and so we will continue to invest in further improvements here.  

You have told us that we need to do more to help you feel part of a community of staff and students. Previous year groups have told us the same and we introduced a dedicated Welcome Week to help address this right from the start of each new student’s time at Warwick. We know the group chat incident will have been on your minds when answering this question too. The action to confirm our community’s values and to improve our disciplinary processes will go some way to address these concerns, but we recognise there is still more to do embed and live those values. Your feedback through NSS will help us to reflect on the progress made so far and the steps we need to take next -especially as the coming year will be very different from recent years. We will take the opportunity of these changes to focus on community building specifically. 

The survey also tells us that we need to communicate changes to your course more effectively. Beyond this, we know that studying across departments – either on a joint degree or just by taking optional modules – is not as straightforward as it can be. We have invested in a number of major projects to improve the organisation and administration of our courses, so that we use one system across departments and everything that a student needs to access is in one place. For example, we have increased the use of Moodle for more modules, we have introduced a new Module Catalogue and for the first time, we are only releasing student results through Tabula this summer instead of several different systems.  

You have also given us a lot to think about regarding your specific course or department. Each course team is working through your responses to the survey, including the helpful comments on what is working well and what needs to change. They will be sharing the results with Course Reps for the year ahead and agreeing the action to take in response. Eight out of ten of you are satisfied overall with your course; so much of our action will be about building on and refining the best bits of a Warwick education. This is encouraging as we end a difficult year in which your patience, commitment and hard work have helped us to ensure you will graduate with your degree this summer (even if the on-campus celebrations have to wait a while). 

We are looking forward to working through the rest of the feedback that has given in the survey. For those of you who will still be with us next year, you will hear more about the changes we will make in response to it. In fact, many of you will contributing to new developments through SSLCs or by feeding into projects. If you have ideas for improving your course or a service provided by the University in the meantime, make sure to tell your Course Rep or Students’ Union officers about it, or put yourself forward to fill one of those roles over the next year and help us to make your ideas a reality. For those of you who have already made a difference through representation and participation: many thanks for doing so!