Our latest student campaigns

Throughout the year you may notice a wide variety of adverts, publicity materials and announcements on campus and online, designed to engage and inspire our student community.

Southampton Connects Staff highlights the latest campaigns and shares how you can get involved.

Celebrating our students

The beginning of the year is always a busy period for our students, but we think it’s important that they take time to reflect on their many and varied achievements at the University.

Our students go on extraordinary journeys while studying here, and our latest campaign is encouraging them to share their stories. Whether they’ve organised an event, spoken at a conference, won a prize, gained some amazing work experience, started a business, had a paper published or done something completely different, the Student Communications Team wants to hear from them.

We’re showcasing five student stories across our campuses to help inspire them. Find out more about My UoS Journey and how students can get involved.

Meet the students behind #MyUoSjourney on the slideshow below:

The team are encouraging students to post their own journeys online using the hashtag #MyUoSjourney, and they will be sharing as many as possible on their social media channels.

Izzy Housego, Student Engagement Officer, says: “Without a doubt, the best part of working in Student Communications is hearing about our amazing students, shouting about their successes and sharing them with the wider University community.”

The power of the student voice

Throughout their time at University, we encourage our students to use their voices and tell us their ideas for how we can improve their experience. It’s important we let students know when we’ve listened to them so we’re also celebrating improvements across our campuses that are a result of student feedback. We’ve also launched a new site where students can log in to find out more.

Positive changes include:

• Together with the Students’ Union, we’ve cut the cost of printing by almost 30%.
• We’ve reduced single use plastics, rewarded reusable cups and provided more places to refill water bottles.
• We’ve improved support services, including launching Student Services Online Chat for quick answers to simple queries.
• We’re piloting the free Winchester School of Art (WSA) weekend shuttle bus between Highfield and WSA, provided by the Students’ Union.
• We’ve installed more microwaves around our campuses – this makes a difference to students who want to heat up food and refuel between their studies.

“Student feedback is transforming the University of Southampton,” says Kieron Broadhead, Executive Director of Student Experience. “Whether it’s big changes, like improvements to our buildings, or smaller changes that just make life a little easier, we’re listening and working with students to make things happen.”

Sometimes, the changes that have a big impact are at a local level, so faculties and departments are also encouraged to celebrate improvements that they have implemented.

The Student Communications Team has a set of templates that you can use to easily design and print materials or share online to help you inform students about the changes made.

We’ve highlighted some of the changes that have been made due to student feedback on the slideshow below.

#ExamZen2019 and #YouGotDiss

The Student Voice and My UoS Journey campaigns are being coordinated by the Student Communications Team based within Communications and Marketing. Throughout the year, the team ensures that students stay up to date with the latest news and events from across the University.

When exams and deadlines are looming, they also publish practical information and promote the wide variety of support available across the University – from mindfulness workshops and dealing with stress, to free sports sessions and Students’ Union events. Students can search for this information on SUSSED or social media using the hashtags #ExamZen2019 and #YouGotDiss

You can find out more about the communications channels we run for students here: Don’t Miss a Thing

You can view the new Student Voice website by logging in here: Student Voice

If you have any questions about the campaigns you can email: studentcomms@soton.ac.uk