Feeding back to students

Giving your students feedback on issues you’ve taken forward for them is an incredibly important part of being a Rep. If students pass an issue on to you and hear no more about it, then it’s understandable why they would think this was a waste of time. You need to keep them informed of where you’ve taken the issue and who’s going to be looking into it, and give them updates whenever you’re given news.

So how can you get this information to students?

Notice Boards
Each School should have a Student Rep notice board, which is used for anything relevant to Student Reps. You can put posters on here giving feedback on issues your students have raised with you. The effectiveness of this does rely on your students knowing the location of the notice board and checking it on a regular basis, so it’s best not to rely on this method of communication alone.

Talks at start or end of lecture and meetings
If you have something you need to inform your students about that won’t take too long but may produce questions from the students, then see if your lecturer would mind you using a few minutes at the start or end of your lecture to talk to your class.

If the issue is something quite sensitive, or something your students wouldn’t want to talk about openly in front of a lecturer, you may want to see if the lecturer would leave the room during the discussion. If this isn’t possible you could arrange a meeting away from the lecture where you can meet up with your students and discuss the issue privately. 

Handouts
If you haven’t got time to go over all the feedback you have, or you think students are too busy to stay around to listen, you can produce a handout containing the information. This means students can take their time to look through the information. You could even put your email address on it so they can contact you with any questions they may have.