“Some students on one module received less seminar hours than others, due to the professor not being available, which they felt was unfair. I raised this and ended up getting an appropriate substitute for those missing days.”
– Brains Sciences Rep
“Students were struggling to hear the tutors in class. We raised this issue with staff and they arranged a microphone, which solved the problem”
– IOE Rep
“I was approached on several occasions about one of our modules. Many students found it difficult, as the lecturer had been changed this year compared to previous years. Hence, many were actually unhappy about the change, but when they spoke with our Programme Directors, they were neglected, as they did not have any solution. Instead of simply asking for the help of Programme Directors, I composed a list of recommendations/ideas to solve the issue. In the end, we managed to get access to all lectures from last year's lecturer via Lecturecast, so the teaching style of her was available to everyone.”
– School of Management Rep
“There were complaints that the Chinese teacher was often showing up late, so as the Chinese language rep for my course, I raised the topic at the SSCC meeting. Soon after, the problem was solved with the Chinese teacher being more punctual and not missing precious class time.”
– BASc Rep
“Lectures were not finishing on time which meant students were arriving late for their following lectures. After raising the issue, lecturers were reminded that they must finish five minutes before the hour in order to leave enough time for students to get to their next lecture.”
– Security and Crime Science Rep
"I brought it up to the department staff notice during the first SSCC that during one of our practicals, the time allocated for final discussion by the professor is very short and students find it difficult to grasp everything within that time. The module Lead took the suggestion very positively and the discussion was increased immediately to 30 minutes. Following this, the students were very appreciative of the change."
– Epidemiology and Health Care Rep
"Some issues I brought up concerning "too speedy" presentations or general complaints about certain lecturers were tackled and the lecturers were informed to adjust their teachings (with giving them hints and not the full complaints as to how to improve their lectures). After the lecturers were notified the number of complaints decreased because I believe the lecturers actually listened to the feedback."
– Biosciences Rep
"This is our first year in clinical medicine and first time that we need to get changed and go into the theatres. Some students as well as myself found it very difficult to know where to get the password/scrubs/changing room etc. So I suggested in a departmental meeting that we can put the information on Moodle so at least everyone has a place to look up the information instead of asking randomly in hospitals."
– Medical School Rep
"One of the issues faced during the year was that second year Chemical Engineering students felt unsupported in their tutorials due to the large student to PGTA ratio. This was brought up at an SSCC meeting, where the staff felt it would be appropriate to increase the number of PGTAs present in tutorials from then on."
– Chemical Engineering Rep
"There were a lot of issues relating to our final year research project. The module organiser left UCL after term 1, and this was known and anticipated from the very beginning of the academic year. Yet, no replacement was found for him and students were left alone and struggling with their projects. Together with the other course representatives, I brought this issue forward at an SSCC. Subsequently, a qualified PhD student was assigned to help students with the project during weekly drop-in sessions and they received help via the Moodle forum. While I am still dissatisfied that this was not a smoother process, and students were left for 1-2 months without proper supervision during their final year project, I am glad a solution could be found in the end."
– Biosciences Rep
"I raised issues about the safety of students on their Psychiatry placements, which resulted in all students being provided lanyards with two breaks in and safety alarms when on the ward."
– Medical School Rep
"Within the last year there have been numerous changes including moving to a new hospital and change to online records within the hospital. My group felt that with this change, some of the teaching/ consultant clinics that we were assigned to were becoming more focused on administrative work on the new online system, as these tasks took longer to complete, and this was taking away from the time spent on clinical teaching and the quality of the clinical teaching. This has been raised in a joint front with the all the students of my class at our programme committee meeting. This has been taken on board, and there has been a noticeable improvement in all of these clinics."
– Eastman Dental Institute Rep
"As an Italian Representative I was able to raise the issue that speaking practise was not sufficient. This was a feeling felt by many students and the staff reassured us that the speaking preparation before exams is really helpful and that they will consider our issue and provide more opportunities for speaking practise throughout the year."
– CLIE Rep
"One of the biggest changes I made with the department staff is the refinement of the course selection process. When I first met with the academic representatives early in the academic year, we immediately came to a consensus that the course pre-selection process during the summer before the registration, as well as the drop-in session after the new term began, is extremely confusing for the students. Therefore, we formed a small group to discuss the issues and modify the process. For example, after consulting the students, we were able to clarify the instruction given in the course selection form in order to avoid the confusion and ambivalence."
- European Languages, Culture and Society Rep
"Running a survey allowed me to present quantitative evidence of students' concerns. For example, whilst students were very happy with some courses, they were very dissatisfied with the quality of statistics teaching. This has led to appointment of a graduate teaching assistant for the following academic year. Part of this role will be to support statistics teaching, to address concerns raised by my cohort."
- Psychological Science Rep
"We had an issue with a professor who had a very poor teaching standard due to their inability to speak English effectively enough for the class to understand, to which I was able to communicate with my course leader and get a new teacher for the second term which many were incredibly grateful for."
- Built Environment Rep
"In Term 2, some of my colleagues complained about the issue that their supervisor did not provide enough support to there group projects probably due to busy times. I collected several pieces of evidence and shared them to academic staff during the SSCC meeting. The lead promised she would contact the supervision department and staffs to assist students more with their projects. After some weeks, my colleagues gave me feedback that their
- Mechanical Engineering Rep
"Legal and Political Theory have different dissertation requirements from the other Master's courses which weren't being addressed, leaving students on my course more confused or their needs unmet. I presented these issues in the meetings and I was contacted at a later date to discuss additional lectures that could be given to address normative dissertations. No significant changes were made for my cohort, but attention was given to the issues which will likely be rectified for next year. I was able to talk to my course convenor to decide what the best course of action would be best."
- Political Science Rep
"Many students pointed out that the lecturer’s ways of teaching were quite new to them because the lecture does not use PowerPoint for teaching, and they found it quite hard to follow. Since I have realised that it was not realistic to ask the lecturer to change his teaching style completely, I asked the lecturer if it is possible to highlight the key themes on the screen, and to make sure everyone follows before he moves on to the next topic. As a result, the lecturer agreed, and have made proper changes for his teaching, and students found this very useful."
- Education, Practice and Society Rep
"I was able to make some progress on the issue of extra course form: providing lecture cast. In my department, there are many international students, whose first language is not English, so they may be struggled with language during lectures. In order to help these students have a better understanding on lecture contents, I and my partners suggested the provision of lecture cast. Ultimately, some lectures agree to do that."
- Psychology and Human Development Rep
"I was able to recommend a more effective way of holding the seminar. In one of the seminars, some lecturers didn't have a specific plan in mind, and the seminar became a chat or experience-sharing among students. One lecturer always had specific questions on handouts for students to focus on. I raised the concern in the meeting in the department, recommending the latter approaches, which all of my peers found extremely useful. The course convenor accepted our recommendations and promise to modify the seminars. (However, we were not able to see this happened since rest of the seminar were canceled due to the strike)."
- Anthropology Rep
"A problem we I encountered was lecture slides often appearing in the wrong format (portrait instead of landscape), which affected people's engagement with lectures (as more of their time was spent reorientating the slides). Although this was a small issue, it was noted by many of our peers. After presenting this issue to our Lead Department Rep, she was subsequently able to modify the formatting of the lecture slides, and many of my peers were grateful that they were able to access their learning material more easily."
- Medical School Rep
"Within my own subject course, I was able to make significant progress on persistent issues with the lack of online access to partner institutions' course management systems. As our subject was an Intercollegiate course, we required access to not only our local Moodle resource, but the learning platforms of other London colleges hosting specific modules. Several weeks after the course had begun, UCL home students on the programme were still not provided access to one of these other institutions' systems, which disrupted their studies by withholding necessary teaching materials such as slides and readings needed to prepare for seminars. I raised this protracted issue at the first Department SSCC meeting, noting that there were still a handful of students who had yet to be given access. Our department head recognised the urgency of the situation and personally noted down to contact the relevant personnel at that institution at a higher level Ancient History Steering Committee meeting. Soon after, we were able to all get access to the module resources, and the delays with our access were also mitigated by an automatic deadline extension to affected summative coursework."
- History Rep
"As Lead Module C student representative, I worked with the tutors and administrative team for Mod C and advised on appropriate changes to sign-off requirements in light of Covid-19. The changes were taken into account and helped to alleviate the stress on students trying to chase up sign offs from clinicians during these challenging times. I also successfully engaged with students in my year group and collated helpful feedback which highlighted areas of improvement for the module. Some areas of improvement raised at meetings include allowing students from Whittington site to have access to EPIC healthcare system when they went to UCLH for placements, and increasing the number of small group tutorials for Endocrinology. The aforementioned suggestions for improvement were noted by the relevant teaching leads and implemented. Students also made some helpful, novel suggestions such as having a teaching fellow at each site to organise more structured teaching for students. However, this is subject to hiring needs and funding from hospital trusts."
- Medical School Rep
"There was an issue where slides weren't being uploaded ahead of time of lectures, I decided to raise this issue in the DSSCC meeting as it was timely. A lot of the time, if there is an upcoming DSSCC meeting it is better to discuss it there as having an in person conversation about the issue is more progressive than an email chain back and forth or other. In this DSSCC meeting one of the academics raised that this was actually a requirement in line with SoRA regulations, and so it was said that this would be enforced from there. It took a long time to see the impact of this, I had to raise it in another DSSCC meeting actually because it wasnt being upheld still, but over time it was becoming better enforced, and we hope that the SSCC will get better at implementing changes as we've made changes with the system at which this is carried out."
- Computer Science Rep
"I was successful in making positive improvements in the students' academic life. In term 1, there was many issues raised by students in my department regarding the postgraduate MSc project. When we first enrolled in the course, there were little to no availability of supervisors for the project, and we were not given enough time to submit a topic. Fellow postgraduate academic reps and I raised this concern during the SSCC meeting, and action was taken to extend the deadline for submitting project topics, and students were also allowed to have external project supervisors. In term 2, there were many Covid-19 issues in terms of the online delivery of lectures, assessments, and examination. We notified these concerns to our department, and students were given proper guidance to solve these issues."
- Physics and Astronomy Rep
"Many students were having concerns regarding the teaching of a statistics module. The student feedback reflected the poor experience of the students. I raised this issue during the SSCC and proposed that the lecturer amends the mistakes posted in the exercise sheets ASAP and that the discussion forum be checked by the lecturer more often. This issue was communicated to the lecturer and he did make the changes very quickly. I was able to confidently raise the issue with the senior staff and proposed effective recommendations."
- Statistical Science Rep
"My peers and I were additionally also concerned about the lack of communication with our demonstrators in the PHAS 0007 and 0008 Experimental Physics modules conducted in the laboratories. I addressed the concern where students felt that they were not given as extensive a background understanding of the theories involved in new experiments as they would need to initiate the experimental procedure in person. This was coupled with feedback on lab book monitoring that again students felt were not conducted frequently enough by demonstrators so as for them to acquire and implement meaningful feedback on the remarks given to them in their lab books. Owing to the cancellation of the second SSCC, I took this concern to my personal tutor instead and am happy to inform that it was acknowledged and the problem remedied towards the end of the second term - that was ultimately cut short due to the pandemic."
- Physics and Astronomy Rep
"Throughout the year, we did our best to assist in the organisation of the course. In particular we were able to help with organisation of the lectures and recordings of the lectures so they were available to all. We organised a Lab tuition and induction, with certification of basic laboratory skills in collaboration with staff. We are working closely to develop more practical skills as part of the MSc."
- Surgery and Interventional Science Rep
"I had received several complaints from my peers regarding the cancellation of some teaching sessions, the poor communication regarding last-minute changes to the timetable or just the wrong timetable altogether. This led to students waiting for prolonged periods of time in the hope that lectures would arrive. On more than one occasion. Although apologies were given, the time lost waiting in venues cannot be reclaimed. I brought this to the attention of other student reps and the module lead. Since reporting this, I noticed a marked improvement in faculty and administration officers communication regarding updates to any cancellations or last-minute changes to the timetables - a sentiment also echoed by my peers."
- Medical School Rep
"I was able to make some progress on the issues of PGT learning disruption and help collect response for Annual Student Experience Review (ASER). In terms of the learning disruption caused by UCU industrial action, my fellow academic representatives and me wrote a letter to president and provost of UCL expressing that this action had a significant negative effect on us students both academically and financially. We later on collected signatures from students and sent it out. The result is that we now can apply for learning funds as compensation but still our financial loss is far more than the amount learning funds offered. In terms of ASER, I used Typeform to create an online survey to collect responses from students within MA Education programme and formed a summary for further presentation."
- Curriculum, Pedagogy and Assessment Rep
"One example is in Chem0008, where the professor's habit was having 2hrs straight lecture. It turns out students prefer a break in between. After I collected enough amount of opinions to confirm that is the mainstream idea in our course, I sent the professor an email to arrange a meeting with him. He agreed on it and did give breaks in the coming lectures."
- Chemistry Rep
"One issue that was raised among multiple students from my course was that the frequency of small study group tasks was too high, and that the large number of students per study group made it difficult to co-ordinate such tasks. We (myself and the other student reps for my course) raised this issue at an early SSCC. The course co-ordinators were receptive to this feedback and articulated that these issues would be taken into account for future student cohorts."
- Psychiatry Rep
"We had a new lecture this year on Eugenics and the history of it at UCL - this lecture received mixed opinions from students. Some didn't like it whereas others found that it gave them an insight. We told the module lead and then created a google form to gather feedback from all the students on how they felt about the lecture, what aspects they liked and didn't like and what changes they would like to see in the lecture. We took these results with us to the SSCC and we are looking for positive changes to come from this for the students receiving the lecture next year."
- Medical School Rep
"A student left feedback on the UNITU website complaining about the teaching style of a lecturer, in which I was able to pass on this feedback to the lecturer who then provided positive feedback in ways in which they would improve the teaching style to engage the students more. This led to a more productive teaching environment for both teaching and learning, and the case was resolved. I solved this issue within 1 day of the issue being raised."
- Social Science Rep
"During my time as a representative, I tried to change a few things – from problems with uploading materials to changing the release date of assignments. When I am aware of a problem, I try to address it as quickly as possible to the Department. During the SSCC meetings for this academic year, I presented several issues. I mentioned the concerns that quite a few students had. That includes that one of the lecturers (from an outside Department) was not uploading notes. Then the co-chair of the meeting had been in contact with the lecturer concerned, and he gave his assurances that he would monitor his handwriting for clarity and additionally provide lecture materials for students after the class. That was solved very quickly, and the students were satisfied. Another positive change followed after an issue regarding the difficulty of the weekly assignments was raised - the lecturer increased his office hours and changed the release date of the assignments to ensure all students can go and ask questions during the office hours and have time to do the assignments. Everyone was happy that progress was made as those problems were solved very quickly. Regarding remote teaching, I have received a few comments and suggestions. I made a summary which includes feedback, suggestions and concerns and shared it with the Department and then discussed it during the last SSCC meeting."
- Statistical Science Rep
"In Module B we were having issues with doctors not turning up to teaching - this was stressful for students and also meant some would commute in for that reason alone. We reduced this by arranging for one student to email beforehand to confirm whether teaching was happening the next day which was helpful in some occasions. Another issue we faced was the lack of EPIC training - students not knowing how to use the programme to access information. Thorough training was arranged earlier this year for the whole year group and according to feedback, it was very helpful."
- Medical School Rep
"There was quite a lot of criticism on one particular module which I was asked to present at the SSCC meetings. Although I was met with some resistance from the staff which were running the meeting about my criticisms, I think I was able to make a case regardless, following up with a list of concerns from the students I was representing. This led to the creation of a question bank for the course which was not previously available, which meant a tangible change which will help students be more successful in the module in the following years."
- Human Sciences Rep
"There were some modules were there was poor communication between the teachers and students hence students were distressed about the coursework and the standard needed to be delivered. After discussing with the sscc committee, there were an increase in flexible office hours and reduced stress towards the workload for the modules with issues."
- Geography Rep
"Live weekly lecture sessions often suffered from poor attendance as it was difficult to keep focused for the entire length of time. I raised this and suggested the session be broken into 2 and it was agreed that there would be a 5–10-minute break in the middle of this session to make it more manageable on the part of the students"
- Medicine Rep
"After student request, I was involved in the decision of the workshops that we needed to have, an issue that was solved after a lot of discussion with both tutors and directors of the school. More workshops were added to the course, following our necessities (such as a 2-day planting workshop that is coming up next week)."
- School of Architecture Rep
"I was successfully able to lobby the support of my fellow representatives and push for a centralized moodle page where important information, dates and templates would be uploaded and easily accessible to students, whereas this information was previously trickled into students' mailboxes one at a time."
- History Rep
"This has been a very special year because of the epidemic. During the whole year, all courses were conducted online and all assignments were submitted online, which resulted in us having to work long hours in front of the computer studying, so I, along with other student representatives, gave feedback to the College about the distress and inconvenience that online learning caused to the students. The college then held a meeting and listened to our suggestions and subsequently the college gave adjusted the classes to include a break between classes."
- SELCS Rep
"In our department we managed to improve the audio in lecture recordings by addressing this issue at the SSCC meeting."
- Biological Sciences Rep
"Some students had come forward saying that they could not concentrate on the online lectures as they had no captions - I bought this forward in a meeting and the head of my course ensured that all tutors put captions on the lectures."
- Education, Practice and Society Rep
"In the first term, our modules consisted of pre-recorded lectures and then a seminar where we could discuss any interesting points or questions. It became very clear that the students felt alone and that they weren't engaging with the work as well as they could do. I contacted the Head of the Department and we discussed what could be better in an SSCC meeting. The faculty all concluded that having live online lectures would be beneficial and having lectures with cameras on and an active chat was a lot better for me and the other students. The second term consisted of only online lectures."
- Cognitive Neuroscience Rep
"I assisted a couple of students facing issues related to coursework of Financial Frameworks module. Students faced problems in clearly understanding the coursework outline and were confused on certain aspects of the coursework. Me and my other finance pathway rep took the issues forward and held meeting with our programme director. It was an interactive discussion and the module leader provided further clarifications which helped students in successfully completing the coursework."
- School of Management Rep
"When we first started the program, the majority of the students showed dissatisfaction with the teaching approach and the number of live sessions that were planned for the program. Thus, as student reps, we decided to collect the name of the students who would like to see more of the live sessions, their concerns, and deliver them directly to the program leader and students' concern were taken into consideration. We received an immediate answer, and from the next week of the complaint, the schedule of the program was modified to include more live sessions that were optional for the students."
- Social Research Institute Rep
"I raised the issue of the time of posting the lectures, as many of them would have liked the lectures to be posted earlier, not only on Sunday before the next week, as in tutorials of asking questions, we would not have time to watch the lectures, look on the problem sheet and also ask questions. After a discussion on the topic and valuable insight from the academic staff, some changes were made. I suggested posting the lectures for a week the Friday before, and that was really implemented. The outcomes were really good: students could better manage their time, had more time to understand lectures, were able to better prepare for tutorials."
- Mathematics Rep
"There was an issue in term 2 with people complaining about a module moving too quickly and chaotically. I contacted the lecturer directly and he was incredibly helpful in immediately taking steps to clarify aspects of the course and reassure students on the structure, and to go more slowly and provide written notes etc."
- Physics and Astronomy Rep
"The issue I faced was our module leader felt the lectures are very effective in terms of engaging students into discussion or break-out room discussion and the some students also approached me about that they wish to have less break-out room discussion during lectures. The exact steps I took was:
1. Contact my partner (the other module rep) and we designed a survey in two different languages. Then we sent out the survey in two different social media apps where all students in the module are included. I was in charge of WeChat and my partner is in charge of WhatsApp.
2.Contact the module leader, set a date to have a meeting to talk about what the module leader want, what we have found, our suggestions, etc.
3. We understood what the module leader want (more discussion and students could learn more effectively), and also what the students want (more output from the teachers and anonymous ways of answering questions or joining discussions) , thus we suggested to include more anonymous ways.
4. The advise was taken, various tools was used, such as Mentimeter slides, whiteboard functions on Zoom,etc. More engagement from students were achieved, students are also happy with the variety and change."
- Education, Practice and Society Rep
"Many students, myself included, were struggling to follow some of the lecture content for one of our year 1 modules due to rather poor audio quality. I notified the lecturer of this via Moodle forums. My course organiser responded with a Moodle poll to gauge just how many of us were experiencing this poor audio quality. Many people responded saying they were experiencing the same issue. As a result, the lecturer was provided with better audio equipment and rerecorded the lectures. This resolved the issue."
- Biological Sciences Rep
"One module the tutor seemed to spend quite a bit of time arranging who was doing what in the online lecture which took time away from discussions. It was mentioned at a rep meeting and the following week the tutor had sorted everything before letting students into the lecture and the class ran much more smoothly."
- Education, Practice and Society Rep
"I was trying to ensure that the workload was less in the second term than in the first, as a lot of students found it harder to adjust to online learning. This issue was raised at the first SSCC meeting, and it was noted to staff that, for example, asynchronous lectures should not be too long/ should be in shorter 20 minute chunks as it can be quite hard to sustain concentration for longer videos. This was noted, and lecturers were reminded of this preference, which many took into account when creating videos for later courses. This is a prime example of a proposed solution proving fruitful, as we had a say in how the issue was solved."
- Physics and Astronomy Rep
"Being able to tackle the lack of engagement in Zoom meeting rooms among students was successful for me. I spoke to the staff in the DSSCC meetings and suggested allowing students to choose their own breakout rooms for discussions, which will allow more engagement. This led to a better remote learning environment and more engagement across the whole cohort."
- School of Pharmacy Rep
"There was an issue in term 2 with people complaining about a module moving too quickly and chaotically. I contacted a member of staff who recommended I contact the lecturer directly, which I did, and he was incredibly helpful in immediately taking steps to clarify aspects of the course and reassure students on the structure, and to go more slowly and provide written notes etc. This was a good experience where I saw real change, and everyone appreciated it."
- Physics and Astronomy Rep