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Offering support in troubled times

Category
Special Series - Reflections from lockdown
Student Experience
Date

This example describes how we can stay in touch and keep our staff-student community alive and vibrant online. It summarises how we have offered support to our final year undergraduate students during and beyond lockdown and graduation.

The online education approach adopted:

During the spring 2020 lockdown, I maintained frequent contact with students via email and Teams, offered one-to-one online meetings in preparation for assessments, hosted film streaming events and director Q&As and organized online workshops and group discussions. I also created extra-curricular resources (reading and film lists, a database of community action groups) and a Covid-specific mailing list to help manage the transition to isolation. I have since offered career advice to several members of this cohort, even after their graduation.

The positive impact on students’ educational experience:

In the words of students:

I just wanted to say thank you so much for today’s session, it was great to voice our concerns to someone. We all appreciate the support you give us so much and we all love the module!!!

Thank you so much for being such an amazing teacher, and for your support today it was really reassuring.

I really appreciate all the advice and support you’re offering at this time – it makes a huge difference!

I also wanted to say thank you for putting together the google doc on stories for troubled times. I think it’s a brilliant idea and will be delving into it post exams!

The impact on my teaching practice:

I have learnt how to use online learning platforms to build stronger and enduring working relationships with students, and how these can be used to offer different forms of support at times of crisis.

Submitted anonymously.