Student Voice Newsletter July 2024

Response to your feedback from the Student Voice Festival

Although it has been a few months, you may remember sharing your views with us on the OU Students Association, and in Director of Student Success and the Enrolment Services workshops in the Student Consultation Meetings in February and March 2024, as part of the Student Voice Festival.

Thank you once again for giving your time and sharing your feedback with us on these topics, to allow us to improve the student experience!

Since then, staff have been analysing your feedback and we are now sharing the full response to the Student Consultation Meetings, including next steps.

Here are some highlights of the changes we have been able to make or plan to make as a result of YOUR feedback:

First TMA - We are trialing new communications for modules presenting in October 2024 that provide reassuring support to students prior to their first TMA submission.

OU Students Association - We gave all students the opportunity to vote in our Conference to rebrand the Student Association as the OU Students’ Union (OpenSU). At the conference, 83.34% voted in favour for the change and we are currently working on this rebrand.

Enrolling at the OU – We have prototyped a ‘task list’ to show users how far along the journey they were, and what was left to do and delivered a ‘check you’re ready’ feature to a proportion of applicants in England as a pilot.

You can read the full response here:

You may have also attended other sessions that were held in Student Voice Festival, such as Tuition Time Travel and Talking TMAs. Here are some of the highlights of responses to your feedback in the online sessions:

Sustainability - Produce a recorded induction, explaining key sustainability terms and introducing students to the OU approach and signposting to activities, in collaboration with the OU Students Association.

Scholarship - Created a digital badge to award ‘Students as Partners in Educational Research’ who have completed 8+ hours scholarship work.

Access Modules - Created a ’Student Choice week’ in the Access module material to help students navigate to subject sites for more information on further study.

Library - We loved your enthusiasm for a badged course. It has encouraged us to continue to develop a three-level badged Digital and Information Literacy course which we hope to launch in September 2024.

Student Mental Health - Reviewed our use of language around sharing mental health challenges to move away from the terms ‘disclosure and declaration’ – we are updating this across Student Support Services.

Staff have written a response to the feedback from these sessions in this full response document: