How attentive and helpful the lecturers are. The proposed redundancies

As before, the lecturers are th best bit!

The University is bright, clean and welcoming, with great facilities at the Keddleston Road site including a variety of coffee shops and places to eat. There is ample space to sit with friends while waiting for lectures to begin. The staff on the front desk and security are helpful and friendly and the site is well maintained. The lecture halls vary from tiered seating to regular classrooms and most have power so that you can plug in your laptop during lectures. Most of the lecturers are friendly, supportive and have passion for their subjects which keeps you engaged and interested during lectures. There is a sense of community and lots of places to go for support such as Student Services or the Student Union. The lecturers are happy to help students who are engaged in lectures and offer support if circumstances outside of University impact upon your studies. The only downside is the impact of the redundancies on studies. This can be issues such as lecturers changing mid module, lectures being cancelled, lecturers not responding to correspondence and lecturers being absent during assessments, meaning that there is not sufficient support prior to the assessment. While we hope that this will be resolved soon, it has impacted my foundation year and caused many students to have a less than ideal experience in the first term of our foundation year. Most lecturers have strived to maintain the same standards in lectures, even though they are facing uncertainty, however, others have not and the impact of the redundancies has been evident. Our hope is that, once the University has been through the process of the redundancies, that we will experience a better quality of lectures with lecturers returning to their normal, passionate and energetic ways of teaching.

I am currently partway through my foundation year and am in a cohort with students from various health and social care degrees. As such, parts of the course are not necessarily relevant to my degree, which is a shame. While I have enjoyed my foundation year so far and enjoyed returning to education, there are areas where the foundation year could improve, and I believe the University want to work on these as they ask for honest feedback on our modules and are looking at a focus group to highlight any areas where the foundation year could be improved. Our lectures generally last for three hours, and we have a break partway through the lectures. In addition to this, the lecturers always allow students to speak up during lectures and participate with their thoughts on the subject we are addressing. Most lecturers are responsive to emails and are happy to support students who are engaged in lectures and attend regularly. In most cases, you can sense the lecturer's passion for the subjects they are teaching, and they also bring their lived experience to the lectures.