Supporting commuting students

Those who travel to their higher education provider (HEP) from their parental or family home, which they lived in prior to entering higher education - rather than having re-located to live in student accommodation (or close to the HEP) for the purposes of studying. This includes full-time and part-time, undergraduate and postgraduate, and in all disciplines and types of institution.

Liz Thomas, the Student Engagement Partnership

Issues affecting commuting students

We know from research and by listening to the students that issues include:

• a lack of sense of belonging to the university community
• inability to attend social events during the evening, including sports and societies
• large gaps in timetabling
• issues around parking and public transport, for example issues with trains and buses
• fitting additional commuting time into the day
• less time to access academic support hours

Ways to support commuting students

• Share information about any parking or transport issues on departmental social media.
• Let students know that they can book lockers on campus through the Students’ Union su@essex.ac.uk
• Suggest students with large timetabling gaps in the day get in contact with the Department Manager to look at compressing their timetable.
• Encourage academic staff to provide academic support via Skype if needed for students who cannot get onto campus for academic support hours.
• Ensure students are clear about how to access library resources off campus through logging into the University library website.