YOUR VOICE Student Satisfaction Surveys STUDENT Issue 2 NEWS 2017/18 the UNIVERSITY of CHESTER STUDENT MAGAZINE

YOUR VOICE Student satisfaction surveys STUDENT www.chester.ac.uk/studentvoice Issue 2 NEWS 2017/18 THE UNIVERSITY OF CHESTER STUDENT MAGAZINE CSU elections p6 Seegulls p8&9 Fundraising champions p15 Surveys close on Monday, April 30, 2018 3 Hackathon engagement 4&5 Careers and Employability Survey 7 #WeAreWarrington All students who complete their survey will have the opportunity to be entered into a prize draw and have the chance to win up to £250 in High Street vouchers 12 Time to cook Academic Quality 16 Skiing stars Support Services 2 STUDENT NEWS STUDENT 1 NEWS Your voice! 2 Student News is an official Student satisfaction surveys 3 University of Chester publication, produced by THE University is keen to make sure all its students have the best Here are the different surveys and who they are mainly for: the University’s Corporate possible experience while studying here. To do this, it needs to • First Year Experience Survey (FYES) Communications Department, know what you think works well and what we could do better. Undergraduate students in their first year of study at University 4 to keep students informed of There are various surveys tailored to students at different of Chester. 5 University news. stages of their time at University. Each only takes around 10 • UK Engagement Survey (UKES) 6 minutes to complete and anyone who completes their survey will Undergraduate students not in their first or final year of study at 7 Any students who would like to have the opportunity to be entered into a prize draw with the University of Chester. 8 write for Student News are invited chance to win up to £250 in High Street vouchers. • Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey (PTES) 9 to get in touch with the Corporate The surveys are your chance to tell share your experience as Taught Postgraduate students studying a course mainly 10 Communications Department on the a student at the University of Chester and your feedback is really at Level 7. 11 email address below. important - the more students that take part, the better we can • Postgraduate Research Experience Survey (PRES) 12 make your experience at the University of Chester. Research Postgraduate students studying a research course 13 CONTACT The National Student Survey (NSS) for final year mainly at Level 8 (includes MRes and Professional Doctorate 14 [email protected] undergraduate students is already open and all eligible students students). 15 will have already been contacted about completing it – if you There is also one prize draw for all the other surveys 16 EDITORIAL TEAM haven’t already filled it in, then please do, as the information combined. The prizes for this are two x £250 High Street 17 • Alexandra Williams from your responses are vital. Each student who fills in the NSS vouchers, 2 x £100 High Street vouchers and 10 x High Street 18 • Beth Heywood survey is eligible for a prize draw – the prizes this year are 50 vouchers. 19 • Charlie Bristow x £50 Amazon vouchers and 10 x £300 STA Travel or Amazon If you would like to complete your survey, or just find out more 20 • Cherelle Mitchell vouchers. about them, please visit: www.chester.ac.uk/studentvoice 21 • Elizabeth Pittaway All the other surveys open on February 12, 2018 (closing on We really hope you take the opportunity to get involved this 22 • Hayley Naldrett April 30, 2018), and your responses to these surveys are just as year and help us make changes that can improve your University 23 • Jack McGovern important! Your feedback is confidential to the research team and experience and that of students like you. Use your voice! 24 • Jemima Pallister any reporting will be entirely anonymous. 25 • Jessica Brown 26 • Katherine Harris 27 • Nan Pickering 28 • Nicholle Nugent 29 • Sandro Salemme • Sophie Bell • Sylvie Devaney PHOTOGRAPHY The University’s AV team, unless otherwise stated. To obtain this information in – large print, audio, electronic or other alternative format please e-mail: [email protected] Winners of last year’s NSS prize draw Samuel Gornall and Amy Frost. STUDENT NEWS 3 1  4 THE University’s first hackathon (a 24 hour computer coding 5 marathon) has taken place at Thornton Science Park. 6 A group of Computer Science students gathered at the Thornton Campus for a 7 weekend of computer coding-based challenges, free refreshments and prizes. 8 Event organisers Peter Butcher and Thomas Day, who are both Demonstrators 9 in the Department of Computer Science, Mark Holland, a PhD student, and 10 Andrew Muncey, Deputy Head of Computer Science, deliberately arranged the 11 event to coincide with a Campus Open Day, so that prospective students could 12 gain a varied flavour of student life. 13 The hackathon was free to enter and students had been signing up since L-R: Ishak Emanet; William Tedstone; Tonje Davidsen and Dylan Elliott. 14 September to take part, with spaces filling up quickly. The attendees were split into 15 four teams and received a brief at the beginning of the event, before starting their 16 challenges. Untitled2 17 Staff were amazed by the quality of work produced by the teams, which primarily consisted of first and 18 second year students – some of whom had only been at University for a few weeks. 19 The overall winners were Team Insomniacs, a group of three first year and one final year undergraduate 20 students. They built a social media aggregator that combined all the output from social media accounts related 21 to the University of Chester, which could then be queried to build up, for example, a calendar of events across 22 the entire University. The team built the system that could be queried using an Amazon Echo Dot which could 23 respond to a user’s specific question. 24 Andrew Muncey, Deputy Head of Computer Science, said: “The quality of the software the students 25 produced in the 24 hour period, with little or no sleep, was testament to their hard work, and the projects 26 created by each of the different teams demonstrated real inventiveness and creativity.” 27 You can find out more about the Hackathon and any more upcoming events on Twitter, Facebook and at 28 http://hack.fse.network/. 29 L-R: Jordan O’Neill, Vikas Gundarapu and Alex Tuft. Helping musicians fulfil their potential IF you’re an aspiring musician and want to learn more about connecting with that is going to stick in the minds of your audience, two podcast episodes including an academic at the University will your fans? provide you with some useful tips. • Audience – Or more specifically, Dr Mark Duffett has built a career around researching, publishing and lecturing playing your audience as an on the topic of fandom and has been referenced in the New York Times and Rolling instrument. How included are your Stone magazine. audience in the overall package of how In the podcast episodes he gives aspiring musicians tips such as thinking about: you present yourself and your music to the • Tradition – looking at how many artists have taken pieces of certain songs world? or genres from a different era and made them their own in the present. • Using your music – Your music should be one Beware of not borrowing something from the recent past though! of your greatest assets. You need to make sure you • Consistent image – Thinking of yourself almost as a brand, if you aren’t are getting the most out of it. consistent, fans may struggle to associate with you and make a lasting Throughout the two episodes, Mark gives great examples from the music world. connection. In particular he talks about Elvis, who he has studied at length, and who, to be fair, • Being memorable – An obvious one perhaps, but something many artists was not bad at gaining the odd fan or two. don’t always focus on. What is it about your music, live show or interview To find out more visit https://www.acpgmusic.com/episodes 4 STUDENT NEWS Careers Fest By Elizabeth Pittaway CAREERS Fest 2017 took a lot of time and planning from many of the staff in Careers and Employability, including myself. Although I came in later on during the planning stages, I still attended every meeting and saw how much hard work went into organising the event. For the University’s first ever careers fair, it was a very successful event with over 700 students and 50 employers attending. Careers Fest helped students find and gain information about possible careers in their area of study. The overall experience helped me, as an events student, as I was able to see how a real event was organised and then implemented. It was nice seeing everyone there and I hope to see you all at next year’s Careers Fest! Carers Fs ‘17 The Chester Carers Difference Award Fs ‘17 by Katherine Harris DURING my degree, I was determined to progress onto a specific Master’s course. To increase my chances I needed to display skill development. I heard about The Chester Difference Award during the University’s Volunteer Fair early in my first year. I had clocked up a number of voluntary hours in various advertised organisations, so I had already gained points towards The CDA without realising, which was very motivating. Careers and Employability staff offered continuous support and advice on how to complete The CDA, which I could use to increase my points. This included volunteering as a red t-shirt during induction weeks, completing the ECDL qualification, attending multiple EYE training sessions, part-time summer work, being a student representative and Student Academic Representative (StAR), alongside being the Vice President of a society.

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