Student Journey

0:00
So digital services are really central to the work that we deliver through well-being and inclusion.

0:07
I've got lots of examples actually.

0:10
One of the first one that occurs to me is the our ability to ensure that we're looking after staff and students 24/7. So for the last few years we have deployed with a partner organisation together all which is a really interesting and important app based service. Staff and students can register to make use of this. It's an anonymous platform where staff and students can engage with each other. So it's a peer support model

0:40
supported by mental health professionals. It allows people to engage with services when they want to. We find that significant proportion of our students don't want to access the service perhaps 9:00 to 5:00 and this allows them to engage in the evenings through the night and at weekends. And very importantly, it's very closely integrated with our well-being inclusion team. So if there are any safeguarding concerns, we get alerted to those we follow up the next day. We are the custodians of the Student Engagement Reporting System,

1:11
which brings together a number of different reporting points in order that we can really identify. When we are concerned that a student perhaps is disengaging from their studies and working in partnership with our excellent personal development tutors and academic schools, we can reach out to students who appear not to be engaging in their studies. If those concerns continue, we can escalate. They can escalate rather through to us to our keep on track service and if necessary to our safeguarding team so that we can reach out to those students and find a way of connecting with them

1:43
to ensure that we can offer them the right kind of support so they can re engage with their studies and go on and be great successful students. We're also working just now in two different areas which is really demonstrating the value I think of partnership with IIS but also about the importance of digital. So in the support of our disabled student population, we work very hard through a disability inclusion team to develop an individualised learning plan or learning profile for each student and we need them to think

2:14
who best to share that with. In the academic side of the university, that system is nearly ready to launch so that we can really effectively communicate those learning requirements and needs, offer students and that they can access the curriculum really effectively. The other area that we're working on just now is a bespoke case management system and our purpose right now is to develop that in regard to students where there may be safeguarding concerns. And we launched that service around three years ago, just after our keep on track

2:45
service so that we can triage student concerns, many of which are very complicated and multifactorial. And we need to keep a really close observance over the kinds of actions that we require ourself of our students and other colleagues. And that case management system will really allow us to feel very confident that we are providing the right service at the right time to students who need us most. The work of our Disability Inclusion team is very much about finding

3:16
and the resources that students need, and in fact colleagues increasingly to deliver in relation to colleagues deliver their work as effectively and efficiently as possible. And for students, it's about accessing the right assistive software and technology that enables them to not have to worry about accessing the curriculum.

3:39
We offer a training service which makes sure that colleagues and students can get the most out of that software. And we have a range of software that's all now mainstreamed and accessible. So we have lots of licences that are available to colleagues and students.

3:54
The con and together with a disability inclusion advisor, reflect on the nature of their impairment or their neurodiverse profile and how they relate to learning. And we can help them identify within the software packages, many of which are very large and exactly where to spend time gaining the right skills and experience to build their confidence so that they can access the curriculum really effectively. That might be connected to recording, might be connected to organising their studies, organising their day.

4:25
It might be connected to voice activated software S that they're not focusing perhaps on typing if they're manual dexterity issues. As the software has developed over the last 20 years, it's become really apparent that the range of issues which you used to be really prominent in higher education have increasingly been overcome because of the advances in that software. It can take a little extra effort and time for that student or colleague to learn,

4:56
use the software and get the most out of that. You can really proficient. But once they've achieved that goal, access in the curriculum is much more straightforward, In fact, to the point where we obviously look at the outcomes for our students and over the last three to five years, on average, our disabled students slightly outperform non disabled students. There may be many underlying reasons for that, but one of them, I think, has to be about access to the right technology and the right support.