This word cloud captures the responses of new students we talked to at the Freshers’ Fairs in September:
Freshers' experience
We asked them to complete the sentence: “ My experience of being a new student so far is…….”. The size of the words indicates how often they were used in student’s comments – the largest words being the most frequent.
This positive message also comes through the New Arrivals survey which the EDU invited all new students to complete in October. There are still areas where we need to work hard as an institution (eg. clear and accurate information for students, before and on arrival; making sure all groups and types of students feel included) – and the survey has suggestions about improvements and some complaints.
But the primary message is positive: most students who completed the survey had a good experience of the beginning of their term, their positive expectations of coming to University were met and they found staff helpful and welcoming.
Here are students’ responses to 2 key questions:
Q5 By the end of my first week:
Students' expectations and sense of belonging
Q 29. At this stage, would you recommend the University of Greenwich to your friends?
Would new students recommend the university of Greenwich?
And a few quotes from the survey, on what students expected and found on arrival at university:
“ah… my expectations… actually as a international i was a bit afraid of new environment. just wanted to get a warm welcome from everyone… and when i arrived.. then it was… in one word… awesome…. !!! i love my university.”
“My expectation on starting university was to be thrown at the deep end, but I guess I was wrong judging by what I have seen all throughout the induction week. I actually received a lot more support than I had expected.’
‘A new door opening up for me and a future I have always dreamed of, now becoming a reality.’
‘I expected to meet many trees of students but instead I met a forest of them. I also expected to see a friendly side of the lecturers in the beginning and I saw just that… Like everything else the beginning is always a road or a journey and all is possible. I put this in my mind so my expectation was not a solid rock. I was ready for any surprise.’
Our response rate to the survey this year was 12.5% – a good improvement on last year, but we will be looking for ways to improve the rate in the next academic session, and hope that Schools will work with us to achieve this.
A comprehensive report on New Arrivals and Transition was presented by EDU to the Learning and Quality Committee on January 19th – this will soon be available on the EDU website.