The University’s Education and Student Experience Programme is celebrating a wealth of successes this autumn as it continues to support the delivery of the Education and Student Experience strategic plans.
Sponsored by Professor Deborah Gill, Vice President Education & Student Experience, and Kieron Broadhead, Senior Executive Director for Students & Infrastructure and Deputy Vice President Operations, the Programme will enhance the overall experience of our students and equip them to flourish in the world once they leave University.
The Programme is currently home to seven of our Strategic Major Projects (SMPs):
- Advancing Assessment
- Collections Development and Discovery
- Hartley Library Transformation
- Southampton Online
- Student Experience Process Transformation
- Successful Futures
- Sustainability Education
We are delighted to share with you some of the recent achievements from a selection of the Programme’s projects below:
Collections Development and Discovery
Now nearly at a close, the Collections Development and Discovery project has successfully delivered immediate benefits for students, as well as long term service enhancements.
The project has significantly improved over 5,000 library catalogue records and established more consistent classification. This means that books are easier to find using the online ‘Library Search’ function, and easier to locate on the shelf.
The University’s heritage and higher use collections are now more prominent at Hartley Library, and 182,700 books have been rehomed in an archive-quality, off-site store accessed via a new click and collect service.
All this activity has improved storage conditions for our items and created capacity in the library for the future expansion of study space and other student-orientated areas.
Consultation with University Faculties and Professional Services has been vital throughout this project and has positively influenced decision making when categorising individual library items.
Discover more about the methodology utilised by the project and the outcome of the consultation process on the Collections Development and Discovery SharePoint site.
Southampton Online
In October, the University announced its partnership with the digital division of Cambridge Education Group, (CEG Digital), to develop and deliver a range of new and exciting online programmes of study.
We’re pleased to share the news that the first programmes within the scope of this project will begin recruitment in January 2025. All part time programmes targeted at participant wanting to consolidate their workplace learning and interests through formal study, these are:
- Three postgraduate taught programmes based on Artificial Intelligence (AI), with a focus on the human-centred side of AI
- Three postgraduate taught programmes based on Business Management, leading to a Master’s in Management award
The project team would like to thank colleagues within the Faculty of Social Sciences, the Southampton Business School and the Web Science Institute, as well as those in Professional Services, for their time and efforts to develop these exciting new programmes at pace with CEG Digital. This will allow our first intake of online students to begin studying with the University in June 2025.
To find out more about Southampton Online, visit the project SharePoint site, here.
Sustainability Education (Goal 4)
This summer, a student intern worked with the Sustainability Education (Goal 4) project to review and refresh the content in the Southampton Sustainability Solutions e-module, originally launched in 2021.
Available for both students and staff to complete, this is a short course designed to explore why sustainability is at the heart of the University/SUSU strategy, and what this means for us individually and collectively.
The refreshed course content provides students and staff with a baseline understanding of some of the most pressing issues in sustainability, what the University is doing to be more sustainable, and how we can all make small, individual changes to make a big difference.
The e-module is now included in the University’s staff induction process and welcome activity for students.
Existing staff and students can complete the refreshed module here.
Thank you
The Education and Student Experience Programme team would like to thank all our colleagues across the University who have contributed their time to these important projects and helped us build on our progress since our last update in June.
This is just a flavour of what’s been going on in the Programme over the last six months. To find out more about what else has been happening, take a look at our ‘Achievements to date’ page on the Programme’s SharePoint site.
If you have any questions about the Programme or would like to share your ideas around the education and student experience, contact the team on [email protected] – we’d love to hear from you.