Welcome Week at NTU

Background
In 2005, the serendipitous collision of three institutional agendas led to the creation of Welcome Week, these were:

• the then learning and teaching strategy's focus on the first year experience
• student satisfaction at institutional elements of induction was relatively poor (2005 data)
• most elements of student enrolment were moved online, thereby reducing the need for Monday and Tuesday of induction week to be spent queuing.

Objectives
We estimate that each year, Welcome Week provides approximately 350 activities for students to engage with, these are spread across four areas of activity:

• social
• cultural
• sporting
• academic.

However, the overarching goal is specifically to help students feel that they have started to belong to the University community and have had opportunities to start to make friendships.

Fitting around programme inductions
Where possible, Welcome Week is intended to fit around programme inductions. We have consciously avoided putting on too many daytime activities. The main events during the day are:

• Welcome to NTU (Monday)
• Freshers Fairs 
  • Tuesday 25 September 2012 - Clifton
  • Wednesday 26 September 2012 - Brackenhurst
  • Thursday 27 and Friday 28 September 2012 - City
• Sports activities (although frequent are individually relatively small and scattered throughout the week)
• University Language Programme tasters (five events in total)
• Two mid-afternoon trips to IKEA from Clifton campus and City site.

We do pay attention to programme induction timetables and have experimented with a limited number of events on the Friday afternoon (for example in 2009, we took a minibus full of students whitewater rafting).

That's all very well, but what about hangovers?

We are very aware that the drinking culture of young people in the UK (including our students) is problematical and, at times, not conducive to constructive learning. Our students have chosen to come to a city that has a reputation as a thriving student community "If you're looking for a city that's crammed with stylish bars, cinemas, music, live comedy venues, student bars, pubs and nightclubs, then Nottingham's the place for you."

Immediately after Welcome Week 2009, we surveyed our students and asked them about the identity of being a student. The second most popular response (19% of all 1,720 responses) related to the social life, the fourth most popular response was about 'alcohol consumption'.

There is a lot of alcohol consumed during Welcome Week and a lot of partying done (in 2009, students estimated that they most commonly spent between £101 and £200 on social activities during Welcome Week). We do have concerns that it gets in the way of studying and are continually searching for alternatives to drinking.

However, each year in the Welcome Week survey, we ask students whether or not they attended all their induction and if they didn't, why not. In the 2009 survey, 74% of all respondents stated that they attended all of their course induction, and of those who didn't attend everything, 18% of the reasons for not attending related to hangovers or alcohol in some way. This was the second-most common answer after 'not seeing the point of doing so' and only just ahead of 'lack of information'.

We acknowledge that this isn't great, but would argue that even if there were no late night social events organised through the SU, students would still find their way to the bars and nightclubs in the city, and would also be in a potentially more vulnerable position whilst doing so.

That said, we of course, would always welcome a dialogue with colleagues about ways forward.

How to use these pages
These pages are intended to help staff at NTU understand what activities are provided for students during Welcome Week and also to help programme teams plan their own inductions. There are resources and downloadable materials available to help with this.

Student feedback from previous years
Each year we put a summary of the student feedback from previous years on the web for colleagues to review.

• Welcome Week 2010 feedback
• Welcome Week Contacts
• Welcome to NTU
• Timetable of events
• Staff ideas, involvement and volunteering
• Programme induction
• Transition
• Research
• Resources