Most of the staff are very supportive and understanding (nearly all the ones I've encountered, anyway!), they are also generally well recognised in their fields of study and know what they are talking about. They are enthusiastic and excited to share their knowledge of their subject and to encourage students to find their own voice and to extend our understanding and knowledge - not just rote learn 'facts'. Added to the academic support, the location is beautiful and the energy is peaceful and supportive, not frenetic. If you are not hankering for an urban campus, with all that entails, UWTSD Lampeter is suberb. The student support services are also excellent, as is their needs assessment process. However, 'Student life + Students' union' are very much (understandably) focused almost 100% on young students living on campus or locally. So, as a mature student when both an undergraduate and postgraduate student, I have found them totally redundant for older students. Not that big a deal as most of us oldies live off campus and have lives and families alongside our studies. But it means I cannot give an assessment of their performance (hence the 3 stars), other than that, this year's SU folks seem a lot more pro-active than some of their predecessors, judging by their communication output. Some years they are great with their level of real engagement - and some they are complete rubbish. It all depends on the individuals.. Worst aspects of the uni? Nothing major apart from the university as a whole having an unpleasant financial bias away from the humanities and towards business and STEM - which are mostly located on the Swansea and Carmarthen campuses, so sometimes there have been practical issues relating to lack of investment in the fabric of the place in Lampeter, including the student car park looking like the Somme for a number of years (= full of massive potholes). But things seem to have improved recently and hopefully this will be a continuing trend. Oh, AND whoever did their disability access assessments for all their buildings (except the library which was poor but is now very good), is a complete blockhead who absolutely had no clue what they were doing. (Who puts in a lift for disabled students that has a door you can't open unless you are standing up - and also have a fair amount of strength?! That's in the admin building..) SO if they meant business they should engage someone who actually knows what they are doing, preferably from life as well as work experience, to re-assess the place and make plans to sort it out, as well as set up a protocol for work-arounds when alterations are prohibitive.

Firstly - I am retired so work placements, internships and career prospects are not on my radar - hence the 3 stars. I have seen quite a lot of emails come through about these issues so I am pretty sure they are on top of it - I just can't comment because they are of no interest to me. As for course content - in my undergrad degree it was interesting and varied - but because Lampeter is seen as a humanities poor relation compared to the other campuses, lack of investment meant that, over the years, they have made staff redundant and now, sadly, humanities is almost a shadow of its former self, other than religion and classics - neither of which I care about. I am an ancient civilisaions person and the staff are and were excellent, and so keen, but now there are far less of them, and they are being dumped with admin tasks as well, since some of the admin jobs have also been cut.. As for teaching quality - most of the lecturers are superb. There are a couple of duds who are too busy climbing the career ladder and posing for their fans, rather than doing a proper job of teaching, and one or two are inclined to almost phone it in rather than engage with students in any meaningful way - especially for first year classes. But most are very good = caring, capable, supportive and experts in their field. (So, basically, it's like any other workplace..) As for contact time - it's pretty good, but for me it is never enough. As an undergraduate we had quite a bit of class time but I would have loved more small-group tutorial time to talk about things and ask loads of stupid questions! You would be surprised at the great conversations that come out of a well-chosen stupid question.. However, they have now gone over to a block-teaching model, so extra hours of tutorial time would be an unfair burden on the remaining staff, who are now already vastly over-stretched. Even as an off-campus research student I am very aware that my supervisor is often working 10-12 hour days, and sometimes more. So I try not to burden her with extra demands for interaction outside our supervision sessions.

No

Most lecturers respond really quickly to any emails sent, and have always been very helpful. They're knowledgeable about what they're teaching, and most importantly - passionate. Being a distance learner it can be tough to feel like you're getting the uni experience, but UWTSD is set up really well for online learning (even pre-pandemic). I only feel like I missed out on campus life for the non-studying aspects. Otherwise it feels very much like a normal uni experience.

My first year of masters was blended for the course, some students are online, others are in class. It actually worked really well for 3 out of 4 modules, and that was down to the lecturers being able to adapt to the style of learning. Whilst each lecturer was seen once a week, they were always available via email (bar one lecturer), and were always willing to help as much as they could. It seemed a fair balance for a masters level course.

No