Some of you said “A nice in between of college and university.” Some said “You don’t feel like a HE student in college, par cularly between 9am‐ 4pm.”
“Excellent support and guidance from tutors.”
“Many of you said that you struggle to access the VLE from home.”
“It is great that the courses are run locally.” On one course you said “Assignment deadlines are not strict enough.”
“The coffee shop needs to be open longer.” “The teachers are really good, mo vated and knowledgeable.” “Feedback is not clarifying the things I don’t understand.” “You want to know more about the backgrounds of the staff.”
We are happy to hear that some of you say the college is a nice in between of college and university; this is the atmosphere we aim to create. We are currently planning a focus group to discuss how students can gain a more HE orientated experience. We do recognise that some of you don’t feel like HE students and this is a concern. We would like to work with you to see how we can overcome this. Please speak to your student rep and also a end our upcoming focus group. We are commi ed to iden fying and providing more HE dedicated facili es within the college. We are pleased to hear that some of you feel supported by the tutors. 95 % of you agree that staff are good at explaining things and 87% of you agree that you have received sufficient support and advice with your studies. Our aim is to make this 100% and we will con nue to train and support your tutors. 92 % of you agree that you have been able to access general IT recourses when you needed to. We are aware of some technical problems with the IT infrastructure in college. This is being addressed by the IT team. Some mes errors occur because the password and username is incorrect; IT support is available when these problems arise. Passwords currently have a lifespan of 90 days; this is under review in the hope of the life span being extended for HE students. Currently students are required to come in to college to reset passwords and we understand how frustra ng this can be. We are reviewing this with the IT team and we aim to come up with a secure procedure to alleviate this problem. The college understands that people want to study HE courses but don’t wish to go to university. We make these courses accessible for everyone and keep our fees lower. We are aware that this feedback has come from one course. We are commi ed to delivering a high standard of academic rigour and prac ce. We have taken immediate ac on in rela on to this. All staff have been made aware of deadlines and consequences of not mee ng deadlines. This informa on is being passed to all HE students. Overall we are pleased that 96% of you agree that assessment arrangements and marking have been fair. We have requested that from September 2014 the coffee shop will open at 2.30pm. We are also inves ga ng improved vending machine op ons. This is great to hear. We aim to employ tutors who are knowledgeable in the subjects they deliver. Our tutors are offered support and CPD/training. Although 91 % of our students are happy with the feedback they receive this is not an acceptable percentage to us. We are checking the quality of feedback in reviews of learning with staff. We will move to the use of ‘turn it in ‘across the board in 2014/15 to help us monitor the consistency of feedback. We are currently pu ng together a profile for all HE staff including sessional staff. The profile will include any research ac vity and research interest that the staff member has, and the profiles will be posted on the website. We also plan to share research ac vi es with you on the website.