Hello everyone,
Welcome back to campus. I hope you all had a restful break and are feeling refreshed and ready for 2023.
I hope, like me, that you are excited for the year ahead and are looking forward to all that DMU has to offer. Some of you may choose to make resolutions and set new goals at the start of a new year, others may feel that they are already on the road to achieving their goals. Whatever you choose, be reassured that we’re here to support you every step of the way. And as you’ll see at the end of this blog, your chance to give us feedback will play an important part in shaping how we support you.
As part of our commitment to ensuring that you have the best learning experience at DMU, we have created DMU BaseCamp. This brilliant innovation, created following your feedback, helps to develop student confidence in studying and enables you to gain access to learning support. DMU BaseCamp gives you a clear understanding of teaching and learning at DMU so you can make the most out of your experience here and your future. In BaseCamp you can find out more about assessment, good academic practices, feedback, careers, professional development and much more. Alongside that, our library and learning services host various webinars and workshops, covering everything from critical writing to understanding feedback and writing up statistical reports.
Many workshops are run both online and in-person, giving you the flexibility to fit them around your studies. Combined with the support you receive from academic staff; these additional resources help you to address all areas of your studies and gain support where you feel you need it most.
Our award-winning careers team is also here to empower you to succeed in your future career. Through the team, you can gain guaranteed work experience opportunities and personalised careers support tailored to you. This year, based on your feedback, the team is also launching a new ‘Careers Hub’, which will be housed in Hugh Aston, next to the Coffee Hut. This will increase the visibility of the team and help you to gain easy access to careers support whenever you need it.
Our DMU Global trips have returned, giving students the opportunity to apply their learning to experiences across the world, and we have enhanced our prayer room, extending it to enable students from a range of faith backgrounds to observe their spiritual obligations. We have also relocated our AV Loans service to The Greenhouse to make it more accessible for students, with the team introducing one-on-one equipment demonstrations and now offering remote laboratories.
But support at university isn’t just about your studies. Having support systems in place to help you with your mental health and wellbeing is also crucial to your success. Our wellbeing services at DMU are available to help you with your mental health, with trained professionals on hand to offer support. They can assist with putting into place reasonable adjustments for your course and guide your academic staff on how to support you through your studies. You can arrange for a Single Point of Access appointment via the Student Gateway (log in using your Single Sign on) and you will be directed to the appropriate support, such as the Disabled Students’ Allowance.
As you can see, student feedback has a huge influence on shaping the university and the services and support that we offer. Next Monday (16 January), we will be launching our ‘survey season’, where students will get the opportunity to offer feedback on their experience at DMU, including teaching, personal support, resources and facilities. Students in years one and two will be contacted by the university, and final-year students will be contacted by Ipsos who are running the annual National Student Survey. If you can, I would encourage you to respond so you can help to shape the future of higher education.
Whatever it is you want to achieve this year, DMU has the right support to help you get there, and I can’t wait to see what you all do in 2023.
Happy new year,
Katie Normington, Vice-Chancellor, DMU
Posted on Monday 9 January 2023