Friday 30 October 2009

Rich feedback...

Work on the second of our questionnaires was completed, with some great input from the Core Project Team - thanks! In this questionnaire, we'll be seeking to address some of the issues raised in the first survey and identify issues that students are still facing during their initial weeks at Goldsmiths.

Additional demographic analysis has been undertaken on the data from the first questionnaire, breaking down respondents by age & gender, department & level and nationality & level. The analysis shows that all departments are represented and there is a good split between UG & PG and home/international students. The gender split of respondents is in line with the student population as a whole and the age range of respondents suggests a changes to the student population, in line with sector expectations. This now offers us the ability to drill down and target specific groups of students in subsequent surveys. We're still trying to plow through 50,000 words of rich feedback from the open-response fields in the questionnaire.

Geraint returned from his recruitment trip to South America on Wednesday and we met to discuss progress, review the project plan and issue log. We also discussed the agenda for the Core Project Team meeting yesterday, my first as Project Officer here.

Following a chat with Myles, I rang Sue Morrison at Derby to chat about Service Design. Sue was very helpful and gave me plenty to think about and discuss with our Core Project Team.

We had an excellent Core Project Team meeting yesterday where we started delving into the feedback received from our new students.

Friday 16 October 2009

Weekly Update

This week we've started to compile questions for the second of our surveys which, is due to be sent out to survey 1 respondents on 26th October. We will be seeking to address some of the issues raised in the first survey and identify issues that students are still facing and any potential areas of concern during their initial weeks. We will also ask be asking specific questions to our three target cohorts of students.

We have been undertaking some further analysis of the data collected in the first student survey and where possible, linking to the student record to identify particular groups of students to target with specific questions in future surveys. We'll use the survey feedback to contribute to process improvement and service deisgn.

I rang and spoke to Jean Sutton (DERBI) and Meghann Morris (Swansea) to introduce myself and chat about how our respective projects are going. It was interesting to hear about the different ways they have collected student feedback and reassuring to know we're facing similar challenges.

We talked about meeting up after the modelling session at the JISC CETIS conference which, will be a great opportunity to review progress and share ideas.

I've just had another Skype chat with Geraint, to update him on progress. Geraint is away for another week, so we've scheduled another update chat for next week.

Friday 9 October 2009

Project Update

Well, I've got to the end of my second week and have now met with all the members of the GoSLuRP Core Project Team (CPT) here at Goldsmiths. At the meetings, we discussed the project plan, progress to date, their individual sub-plans, risks and issues and plans for the second student survey which, is due to go out on 26th October.

CPT members are making good progress on the deliverables within their sub-plans and so the project is on schedule, with no major risk or issues to be reported.

We have started to analyse the data from the first survey and after attending a presentation from i-Graduate on the results of the Student and International Student Barameter on Wednesday, I now have some ideas of how we present the results from our survey.

We had over 480 students complete the first survey and 362 have said they are willing to help with future surveys, that's over 10% of the target population. The great news is that of those, we have a good spread over the three cohorts we are specifically interested in for this project.

Earlier today I chatted with Sharon Perry who kindly explained the role of JISC CETIS and RMSAS. That was really helpful, thanks Sharon.

I've just had a Skype chat with Geraint Fox, who is in South America for a recruitment event, to update him on progress and we have scheduled another one for next week.

Next week, we'll be working on compiling the second survey which, will be sent out to the 362 students who completed the first survey. We will be seeking to address some of the issues raised in the first survey and identify issues that students are still facing now and any potential areas of concern during their initial weeks. We will also ask be asking specific questions to our three target cohorts of students.

Friday 2 October 2009

My first week...

Hello, my name is Kevin Thomas and I have taken over from Tina as the GoSLuRP Project Officer here at Goldsmiths.

I've had a busy first week finding my way around, getting up to speed with the project and meeting the Core Project Team.

We've had a fantastic response to our first survey, with over 473 responses to date and 87% willing to participate further in the project. So, a big thank you to all students who have taken the time to provide us with this valuable feedback.

Next week, we'll begin analysing all the data we've collected and start work on the second survey.