Welcome Zones and Call Operation
For the September Welcome period, the Welcome Team consisting of 14 Student Ambassadors covered Live Chat, Moodle, emails and telephone calls both inbound and outbound to support new students with their registration and induction. The Welcome Team had 11,827 interactions with students:
- 9,119 calls
- 2,001 Live chat interactions
- 707 emails
We also had over 50 Student Ambassadors supporting the Welcome Zones across all three campuses in September ensuring a welcoming and vibrant experience for new and returning students.
The Welcome Team call operation has now resumed for the January Welcome period.
Student Peer Mentoring Programme rolled out across all Faculties
Following a successful pilot in the Business School last year, we are excited to have rolled out our Vygo student peer mentoring scheme across all Faculties enabling all first year undergraduate and postgraduate students to connect with second or third year students to support their transition to university and getting to know life at Greenwich. The scheme builds on existing peer mentoring provisions within Schools and enables scalability, streamlining and better impact reporting of the scheme using the student support platform Vygo.
Since the start of the academic year, 25% of all students have registered on the Vygo platform with 1,961 active mentees and 189 mentors.
Mentor recruitment continues to be open throughout the year – more information for students is available here.
As we are looking to grow and develop the scheme, do get in touch if you would like to promote the programme in your subject area.
New Leadership Programme for Students of Colour
We are delighted to have launched a new leadership programme specifically supporting our students of colour in collaboration with Grit. The first cohort of 22 students participated in the 2-day programme in November with follow-up workshops scheduled in term 2.
Cost of Living initiatives for students
To support students during the current cost-of-living crisis, we have been working with Greenwich Students’ Union on several initiatives:
- Cost-of-living checklist
- Open Pantry (now closed for term 1)
- Community Breakfasts
- Provision of dongles over University closure period
- Hidden course cost audit
Partnership with Charlton Athletic Football Club and Community Trust
Most successful Charlton Athletic Partnership Day to date!
- 250+ registrations of interest from staff, students and alumni
- A wide range of additional activity on the day including signed shirt giveaways, promotional videos and UoG branded pies
Sidemen Charity Football match at Charlton
- 150+ students registered their interest to work as event stewards
- 2.6 million concurrent viewers watched the match
- Over £1m raised for various charities
- Event supported by UoG students
The Charlton Athletic Community Trust health team also promoted Stoptober advice and support on campus throughout October.
Retention and Success
Our focus this year is on streamlining the attendance monitoring process and providing more personalised support to students not attending classes to re-engage them at the earliest opportunity. We have:
- Established a central team bringing all Retention and Success Officers together
- Streamlined our attendance monitoring processes and updated our Student Engagement Policy to better support students
- Launched new training on Horizon for staff as well as a staff FAQ page
- Introduced QR codes to enable attendance recording at lectures
- Worked in collaboration with the GSU Retention Project to prioritise calling students who are not attending classes
Forthcoming projects Term 2
- Postgraduate student experience
- University of Sanctuary
- Estranged Students
If you would like to find out more about any of these activities or work with the Student Engagement & Success Team in the future, please contact the Head of Student Engagement and Success.
