While outward signs of coronavirus have all but disappeared from our campuses, students are still very much feeling the effects of the past three years. In this session, Katie and Nigel from Canterbury Christ Church University’s Student Communications team explore the impact of coronavirus on the current and future student population. They'll also take us through the work they’ve been doing to foster inclusivity and to support students to build their confidence and connect with each other, and university services, in a post-pandemic world.

As the cost of living rises, students look to their universities for increased support. This session covers how City and Sheffield have approached communicating the cost of living support to students.

Email has a giant presence on university campuses, but should students have to trawl through their inboxes to sort important information from clutter and spam? Our students don’t think so. In a 2021 review, we found that students disliked getting so many emails, didn’t read them, and didn’t know how to find information across several different platforms. They told us they wanted one place where they could find out what’s happening on campus and get involved in their community. In this session, we’ll dive into the problems we found, how we designed a project to untangle our channels and unite our communications across platforms, and what happens next as we move away from email.

How do we increase the student sense of belonging? To strengthen the university community, we are using the power of student storytelling. By promoting stories about students and by using student ambassadors we want to make the students feel like they are Karolinska Institutet – an integral part of our university.

Post-exam celebrations in the form of ‘trashing’ (a practice where students throw, spray and pour food, liquids and other materials in their academic dress) have taken place for many years at Oxford, resulting in disruption, additional costs and reputational damage to the University. Oxford has previously run different campaigns to deter this activity and has built on the success since the pandemic to significantly reduce this behaviour, including reducing the impact on the local environment and wider city community. Join Lauren Gale, Senior Communications Manager for Students and the Academic Administration Division at Oxford University for an overview of the development of a campaign famously unpopular with Oxford students and how buy-in has been sought from previously disengaged senior stakeholders.

This session covers how Birmingham has begun to tackle the challenge of student communications at a large institution, sharing the highs and lows of ditching the silos. Exploring the development of a cohesive student framework, bespoke delivery at a local level, and practical examples of how we are making this happen.