Staff Writer Ayushi Goel on the Circle U. workshop, where students from all over Europe discuss the challenges of being a first year in search of a common solution.
Circle U. is a collaboration between nine European universities including King’s College London which have agreed to combine their expertise and common interests to build one European University. Circle U. organised a workshop which took place on campus from the 14th to 16th of October.
The workshop started with a welcome address from Professor Funmi Olonisakin, a Circle U. founder and the Vice President of International, Engagement and Services (IES) at King’s College London. This was followed by a short presentation about Circle U. as an organisation, in which they shared the project’s aims and timeline.
The workshop’s objective was to bring students together to share and discuss their first-year experience, so that they could later develop ideas to improve and ease the transition to university. These would then be communicated to the student body and higher authorities, those who can enact change regarding student life.
On the first day of the workshop, all students, staff and facilitators introduced themselves. Icebreaker sessions helped reduce the awkwardness and create a bond between the attendees as they were all working towards a common goal.
The actual conversation and work started on the second day. The workshop began with presentations from all the participating universities about some of the biggest issues they face. This exercise gave others a chance to jot down some of the similar issues they faced. A major issue shared among all the universities was the lack of academic and social support. All of them felt that it was difficult to deal with the transition from high school to university, in terms of how academic interaction worked. They agreed that the professors in the university sometimes could come across as cold as compared to their high school teachers which were quite involved with them on a day-to-day basis.
Following this conversation, the students were encouraged to come up with what they want ‘more’ or ‘less’ of in the first year, how their first-year experience would look, and think about the opposite of the ideal.
All these activities were building up to designing the Dream-board. The groups designed a roadmap from high school up until the end of the second year incorporating all the previous ideas discussed. One group created a checklist-type roadmap where they listed everything they would like in the first year and ticked yes to everything, showcasing that their ideal experience would be doing everything: from making the right course choice to having a part-time job as well as enjoying a balance between social and academic life.
Moving on from the dream board exercise, the groups were assigned to brainstorm and present one or two initiatives to support their dream board. Some of these included:
- A student-lead podcast headed by second and third-year students to support first years
- A ‘not so dating app’ for making friends at university
- A pre-university reading and writing course
- A community garden for overall wellbeing
At the end of the session, the groups pitched these ideas to other groups and received feedback on how to improve them.
The last day was reserved for talking about how to implement the initiatives that were discussed the previous day. Communicating these initiatives to the university and the student body was the major problem that they came up with. Some of the solutions suggested included making TikToks and other short videos to catch the eyes of the student union and the student body.
A lot of the students in the workshop were apprehensive about whether or not their ideas would be implemented, but the staff and the facilitators reassured them of their doubts. The Circle U. staff at King’s said they are hoping to communicate them to the higher authority by the end of the year.
The groups would be in touch for further communication and will follow up on their initiatives throughout the year. At the end of the workshop, Circle U. revealed a Seed Funding Scheme available to students from the nine universities for collaborative and entrepreneurial projects.
All the participants were hopeful that their initiatives would be shaped into reality and would help the incoming future students better transition into university.
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