Rebecca Palmer is ULaw’s new Head of Online Campus Operations. She formally worked in operations at our Chester Campus. Rebecca shared some insights about the unique challenges and rewards of helping students learn better online.
By Cara Fielder. Published 25 October 2021.
Communicating remotely is a steep learning curve for staff and students. Impressively, student numbers are high and continuing to grow. I have a great team and we have recruited during lockdown very successfully.
Fundamentally, we communicate as much as possible and offer drop-in sessions for students to get in touch with us. This is a great alternative to just using email.
The biggest benefit of the online campus is having the ability to learn at your own pace and around day-to-day commitments. We offer a lot of support services such as: pro-bono, counselling, welfare and student info. They are all there to guide students from Induction through to graduation - so the whole student journey.
One day is never the same in my role. I attend several meetings with all areas of the business. This can range from a welfare meeting, heads’ planning meeting through to team meetings with the assessments and then student information teams. I support with enquiry inboxes as the student enquiries are extremely high and that is their main way of communicating with us.
I work very closely with Assessments, Student Information, the Management team of the Online Campus as well as the Head of Operations across campuses and central teams. I like the support network; we are all in it together, particularly at peak times such as Induction. I am aware that 24% of all ULaw students are registered with the Online Campus, with numbers still rising and some inductions still to take place next month.
I worked in manufacturing for 11 years in various roles, ranging from Sales Administrator, Account Manager through to Technical Manager before I joined ULaw. This provided me with transferable skills to use in my first role at ULaw, which was Student Information Manager at the Chester Campus.
My current role is extremely busy - managing the Assessments and Student Information teams so they can support the ever-growing student numbers. The main difference is also that we are now remote, so managing a team of people and helping them to adapt to remote working is very challenging. The key word is communication and regular video calls are vital to check in with the team.
I have gained so much confidence during my time at the Chester Campus. I have learned many skills, such as delegation and that I cannot fix everything even though I would like to. I have enjoyed networking and gaining key contacts within ULaw who I can call upon if I need to. This has been important, especially as we have been remote-working since the start of my role at the Online Campus. Luckily, a lot of the team came across from Chester to the Online Campus, so we had established relationships which helped during these challenging times. I am very grateful to be part of this evolving Online Campus.
To find out how you can Learn Your Way at ULaw, visit our Online Campus here.
