Thank you to everyone that has taken the time to complete one of our feedback forms; after reviewing all your comments and suggestions here is a summary of what you said and what we did.
Buddy Scheme Autumn Term in Numbers
318 Current Students
865 New Students
1200 Total number involved
27 new students from this term have already applied to be Volunteers in January.
5.5% of all First Generation Scholars at Sussex are on the Buddy Scheme
42% of students on the Buddy Scheme are International students.
The Good Stuff
We would just like to say thank you for all your positive feedback about your experience, here is an overview of some of the general comments:
68% of respondents said they had met up with all their buddies and felt they had been well matched with at least one of them.
Overall event satisfaction was rated as excellent
You found that our events were good value for money
The events encouraged interaction and gave you the opportunity to try something new
Buddy Volunteers found our Buddy Conference in Freshers Week to be really helpful and informative.
You find the Buddy Scheme website easy to use and informative, and that the sign up process was easy.
You like our weekly newsletter.
You enjoyed the opportunity to meet new people from different cultures
You felt being a Buddy Volunteer has improved your communication skills
New students really like having a ‘go to’ person to ask questions
78% of respondents to feedback said they would recommend the scheme to others
Your comments and suggestions
There was a lot of feedback from students about not being contacted by their buddy or their buddy not replying to emails/not showing up when meetings are arranged etc. We are really sorry to hear that this has happened to a few of you. We are going to make some changes to our recruitment process for Buddy Volunteers to ensure that they fully understand the commitment to their buddy and the importance of informing Buddy Scheme staff if this commitment becomes too much. We cannot stress enough to PLEASE let us know if you have any problems – this is why we are here! We cannot rectify things if we do not know about them.
Here are the many ways we can be contacted:
by emailing: buddyscheme@sussexstudent.com
or individually: jane.t@sussexstudent.com or natalie.s@sussexstudent.com
come and see us at the Activities Office, First Floor, Falmer House. Open 10am – 4.30pm weekdays during term time.
email via the website
use the discussion forum
Message us on Facebook
We have put a lot of effort into strengthening our relationship with Buddy Volunteers, mainly by improving communication with them and checking in. We will begin to do this with our new students as well in case some are too shy to contact us. We hope that this will filter out new students who have been left unsupported so we can identify them at a time that it matters and we can help. At the end of term it is a bit too late. Again, please tell us as soon as you can if you are having problems contacting your Buddy.
We will be asking new students to let us know if they are happy and settled and no longer need a Buddy. This is to avoid Buddy Volunteers checking in on a happy student when there might be someone else who is more in need of support.
We have discovered that some students have not been receiving the automatic emails from our system so we are working with our web designer to track these emails better. We believe this may be why some students have not managed to contact each other.
We will also be adding phone numbers to our application form so there is another way of contacting your buddy if email is a problem.
68% of respondents felt they were matched well with their Buddy. However, we acknowledge that due to the nature of a Masters degrees, there is a lack of Postgraduate Buddy Volunteers. We have made new contacts within the Doctoral School, and with the assistance of Rose Taylor, Postgraduate Education Officer, we hope to attract more Postgraduates to help new Postgraduates starting at Sussex.
60% of Buddy Volunteers have expressed an interest in attending skills training and our Communication Skills session this term was highly rated. Therefore, we will offer Communication Skills training again next term so please sign up if you are interested. We have also secured training from the University to offer Cultural Awareness training to cover topics such as homesickness, language barriers and culture shock. This will help with the Buddy relationship and be really good experience for Buddy Volunteers so keep an eye out for further announcements!
We received a lot of suggestions about the times and cost of our events. We planned many of our trips and events to take place on Wednesday afternoons – this is because academic timetables are supposed to be clear to give students the time for extracurricular activities, such as sport. However, with the increase in student numbers and the lack of space on campus, it seems that Wednesday afternoon is not being kept free from teaching. It was suggested to have some events and trips take place on the weekend; although this is outside of normal working hours we will try to make this happen a bit more. We are also going to do more events and activities on Friday afternoon as this was also popular in the recent poll.
As our ticket sales were very low this term, we have made the decision to no longer put on large trips requiring coach hire. Private coaches are extremely expensive even if it is only going a short distance and has inflated ticket prices. By staying local and sticking to public transport, we can subsidise ticket prices more which makes it cheaper for you!
You suggested putting our longer all-day trips earlier on in the term due to University workload towards the end of term. Feedback suggests that you are all very busy so we have decided not to organise as many all-day trips to avoid losing money and having empty coaches.
We listened to your suggestions for trips and events from the survey we sent out and we have arranged our Spring Term events based on your top answers. You can find our events on our website and on Facebook.
As suggested, we have changed the “calendar” section on our website to “events” to make it clearer where to find them.
Some feedback suggests that Buddy Volunteers would like to get to know each other a bit more. We have experimented with regular Buddy Volunteer socials but without success; we will have a re-think about this. Please let us know any ideas you may have.
It was commented that the name “Buddy” scheme was a bit patronising. This was not meant to be patronising at all although we can see where you’re coming from. We have looked into this and after some research, decided on “Buddy” as we discovered that there are much worse names out there! “Buddy” is nationally recognised throughout other Students’ Unions and Universities and we tried to avoid confusion with other schemes at Sussex that already use words such as “mentor” and “peer”. Some organisations will assign new members of staff to a current colleague and refer to them as their ‘buddy’ so it also mirrors this set up.
There is a Frequently Asked Questions section on the website that answers some of these questions which you might want to have a look at our FAQs.