By now most students will be aware that significant changes have been taking place across the curriculum in preparation for September. Hopefully you have received an email explaining what those changes are and that they are due to the safety and logistical challenges, and the financial impact, of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Your students' union aim is to ensure that the new curriculum works well for students and that where changes have been made to module and course options, students are fully consulted, student feedback is listened to and valued, and students’ interests are protected. Finally, we want to ensure students have appropriate routes of complaint if they are not happy with the options available to them. 

We fully appreciate the amount of hard work the university has been doing to prepare the changes to curriculum for this and the next academic year. We want to ensure that all staff and students feel confident and competent to make new types of learning work and enjoy the innovative ideas that will come out of these changes.  

You can find out more about how your student officers have been involved in this process and what we have been advocating for here.

We anticipate further communication will be coming out to students next week explaining exactly what these module changes are and how your course is affected. For many the changes are likely to be minimal or low impact. But it is likely that there are some students who will feel that the changes have a significant impact on the course they were expecting to do. So what do you need to do?

1. Check your emails regularly to ensure you access the information about how you are affected as soon as you can – there will be a deadline by which you need to respond to your school with any decisions you make.
2. If you don’t understand the changes, contact your school using the contact info provided in your email.
3. If you are concerned about how the change affects you personally or need further help understanding what it means, you can get in touch with advice(su) here and our advisors can support you in exploring your options.
4. If you want to raise a course, school or faculty level issue, use the form here and our officers will raise your concern with school or faculty leads, or university senior management as required.
5. If you feel worried about coming back for whatever reason – money, health, caring responsibilities – speak to your school to see what they can do to support you to learn remotely.
6. As your student union, we want to understand how you feel about the changes being made and how those changes are being communicated, so please also use the form to share your feedback with us good or bad.

As always, don’t be a stranger. Stay safe and keep in touch

Callum