Fame...

The GoSLuRP Project got a double page feature in the November/December edition of Staff Hallmark, the newsletter for Goldsmiths staff - great internal publicity for the project!

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.

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.

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.

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.

So Long, Farewell as the song goes

After just over two months slurping with Goldsmiths it's time for me to bid the project farewell and move on to pastures new.

Leaving wasn't an easy choice to make but someone made me an offer I couldn't refuse.

I will be sorry to leave but would like to feel that I have left the project in a stable condition for someone else to take the reigns of.

That person is going to be Kevin who will no doubt introduce himself next week on here once he has email and everything sorted.

I would like to take this opportunity to wish the very best to everyone involved in this project - it really has been a pleasure to be part of.

Tina

First Survey

Firstly, apologies for the lack of posting over the last month.

The focus during this time has been producing the questionnaire in readiness for publishing to all new first year students this week together with the flyer advertising this.

The survey started out with over 100 questions - far too long - no one would complete that!!!! And yet every question was relevant and would give an insight into how students felt about being at Goldsmiths.

After deliberation this was summarised down to a workable 79 questions and was broken down into 5 categories:

About you - to identify what type of students they are (post graduate, international, widening participation) in order to progress forward with a defined set of cohorts in future questionnaires

Pre-arrival - to gauge perception of their experience to date

Arrival - to establish their first impressions - do they feel welcome, do they have any issues, do they know who to go to to address these

Funding - get their viewpoint on how they have found this

Follow- up - a major part of this initial survey will be to identify a group of willing cohorts who are prepared to assist with the project going forward and who will give us quality information to analyse

After much refining, which was all noted and tracked in a spreadsheet so we could see how things were evolving, the survey was ready for testing and timing. This was a concern as we didn't want students to be put off by this. However, by putting this on the front introduction page and incorporating a progress bar then students were fully aware of how much commitment was required of them from the offset.

Then to the flyer for handing out at enrollment. The concern was about putting too much information on this and having them miss the point of what we were asking them to do. However, we kept the front simple yet aesthetically pleasing and on the back obtained a load of useful contacts hence they would be less likely to throw this away. Additionally, by doing this we were able to split the costs with another department thus keeping an eye on the budget and costs down. The outcome was a high gloss, A5 flyer that looks pretty darn good.

The front:

and the back:

Of course now all this has been done it's out of our hands and is down to the students as to whether or not they complete it. Nightmares have been had about it, risks have been discussed - was it still too long, would they find it boring, would they just curse and abandon it.......

Well 4 days since its launch I am happy to report that as of 5 minutes ago we are up to:

101 surveys started
80 completed (79.2%) - obviously some students have just logged on
70 people agreeing to help with further work

An example of some of the information we will extract from this can be seen in the following chart:



The survey closes on Friday 2nd October but I am sure you will agree that we have a healthy start to our information gathering.