Dear Students,
In her video message a few weeks ago you heard the Dean for Students’ perspective on these challenging times and the range of support in place for you to draw upon. I’m delighted that this week SU President, Omar Hijazi, shares his advice for looking after your wellbeing during lockdown which you can see above.
Our motto for education at St George’s is “transformative education, in partnership” and a partnership between the SU and University during this period of disruption has been particularly important for informing the University’s thinking and decisions.
I have particularly appreciated having students’ perspectives from SU surveys, committee representation and Unitu and their role in building student-staff dialogue with student groups facing particular challenges. You can hear from the organisers about Teams forums for student parents and carers and international students, and how to sign up, below.
Over the past few weeks, we have seen a significant increase in the number of requests coming through for us to make new online learning resources available to students. These requests have been coming via three main channels: students, staff, and external companies. Below you will find a summary of the resources currently available to all students and those that are in development.
Understandably, we have also received many queries from our final year students on the plans for graduation. The ceremonies are currently scheduled to take place at an external venue (the Barbican Centre) and while we await further information from the government and the Barbican Centre, we are contingency planning in the likely event that the ceremonies need to be postponed.
We apologise that we cannot give a definitive answer at this stage, as we know this may have implications for travel plans for you and your guests, but we will share further information about the ceremonies as soon as we possibly can.
Our Principal, Jenny Higham, wants to make sure that those of you due to graduate this year can still enjoy the full graduation experience and celebrate in person alongside your peers, your course teams and your family and friends. [[[NBSP]]]
In the meantime, we still want to celebrate the significant achievements of our final year students and to give you all the chance to get together with members of your course – both students and staff – to mark the end of your time here as a student at St George’s. The University will be hosting a number of virtual ‘End of Course Celebrations’ – further information about these will be posted to course Canvas pages as soon as details are confirmed so please do check those over the coming weeks.
Best wishes, [[[NBSP]]] [[[NBSP]]]
Professor Jane Saffell [[[NBSP]]]
Deputy Principal (Education) [[[NBSP]]]
St George’s, University of London [[[NBSP]]]
Student parents and carers: a message from Lola Arowoshola, SPACE President
SPACE is a student led welfare society of the SU. We are here to advocate for students with caring responsibilities in all undergraduate and postgraduate courses. During this Covid-19 period, we have been communicating with the University to ensure our specific challenges and concerns are heard and addressed. We have successfully used the SPACE Microsoft Teams forum to engage with [[[NBSP]]] course leads and University heads. All SPACE members are welcome to join this forum. If you are yet to join or if [[[NBSP]]] your [[[NBSP]]] circumstances have recently changed, leading to new caring responsibilities, please feel free to contact us [[[NBSP]]] at space@su.sgul.ac.uk. [[[NBSP]]]
International students: a message from Shanshan (International Support), Cilla and Ferran (International Associate Deans)
For the last three weeks, we have been running an informal weekly connection session for international students via Microsoft teams. Thanks very much to those that joined us; it was very nice to see so many of you and hear your experiences during this rather unusual period.
We are really looking forward to continuing this activity and expanding it to include EU students and any home students who are currently outside the UK. We would like to encourage all of you to join us! To this end, we have created the “International Students Forum” as a Microsoft Teams group. As a member of this group, you will have access to information related to the outcomes of our Wednesday’s sessions and other relevant documents, including direct links to the University’s Covid-19 guidance to students. Importantly, you’ll have access to the group chat where you can drop messages, suggest ideas for new sessions or sending a picture of that great dish you cooked or cake you baked!
We will still have an e-meeting on Wednesdays, but, from this week, we are running a single session at 13.00 BST. The plan is the same than for the first round of sessions, that is:
- Wednesday 29th April 1.00pm - “Study tips to keep focussed and productive”
- Wednesday 6th May 1.00pm - “Looking after Yourself”
- Wednesday 13th May 1.00pm - “Keeping Connected”
Further weekly sessions will follow on these themes and/or on topics you feel would be helpful.
If you are an international or EU student currently in the UK or anywhere else in the world (or a home student currently outside the UK) and would like to join us, please send an email to our International Support and compliance officer, Shanshan Zhang (szhang@sgul.ac.uk).
Take great care and we look forward to meeting you online on Wednesdays.
Shanshan Zhang
International Support and Compliance Officer
(szhang@sgul.ac.uk)
Professor Priscilla Harries
Professor of Occupational Therapy
Associate Dean International - Education Development
(P.Harries@sgul.kingston.ac.uk)
Dr Ferran Valderrama
Reader in Cancer Cell Biology
Associate Dean International - Student Mobility
(fvalderr@sgul.ac.uk)
Online learning resource(s): [[[NBSP]]]
There is a range of resources that are available to all students at St George’s including ‘free’ resources that have been opened up by academic publishers at this time to support student learning.
Some of these resources which you may find useful at this time include:
- BMJ Learning which features hundreds of accredited, peer-reviewed learning modules in text, video and audio formats (includes resources for nursing and Allied Health).
- AccessMedicine which includes access to 130+ e-books organised by basic sciences, clinical medicine, and healthcare systems. The AccessMedicine resource also includes access to cases, videos, and Q&As.
- JoVE Science Education, a library of video demonstrations covering a wide range of subjects in science and medicine (includes resources for nursing and Allied Health).
- LWW Health Library which includes access to key texts, videos, cases and questions (includes resources for nursing and Allied Health).
- For allied health professions (AHP) workshop, please visit here for a one-page resource for the allied health professions (AHP) workforce that curates key published guidance and updates in relation to Covid-19. [[[NBSP]]]
In addition to these learning resources a large number of eBooks are now available, across the range of medicine, nursing and allied health, and they can be found using Hunter (the Library catalogue) at library.sgul.ac.uk. [[[NBSP]]]
In development: [[[NBSP]]]
We are working with FutureLearn to allow time-limited free access to our MOOC courses for all UK-based students. In return, our students would gain free access to all other FutureLearn courses from other institutions on the platform. We will provide further details once we are able to do so. In the meantime, St George’s students can view our range of FutureLearn courses, many of which are currently available for enrolment, or anyway part of your curriculum.
If you have any questions relating to learning resources, please contact the Library team by emailing Library@sgul.ac.uk.
If your question is about learning technologies, please contact the Learning Technology Services Team by emailing LTS@sgul.ac.uk. [[[NBSP]]]