What is GetHeard@City?
GetHeard@City (powered by Unitu) is a new app that students can use to give feedback, ask questions and raise issues with your Programme Reps, and share your experiences with other students.
You are automatically placed onto a Board based on your programme, e.g. "Finance Cluster Year 2" or "PG Psychology". All students also have access to the University Board. In each Board are two sections, a private feedback board , and a public feedback board.
Private Feedback: This is a space to discuss and share your thoughts with other students. You can create posts and you can react, share, and comment on other students’ posts. You can use the space to support the students in your programme and answer students' questions. You can also take students' questions, issues, and ideas to staff via the app. If a post gets lots of engagement from students, or you decide it needs to be raised with staff members, you can move a post to the public feedback board.
Public Feedback: This is where staff on your course, and wider university staff, will be able to see and interact with your posts. They’ll use this space to provide you with regular updates and liaise with you to resolve issues. Once your post is in the public area, staff can collaborate with you on the next steps to address any issues and work together on improvements based on feedback. Staff can also use this area to ask students for feedback, for example on any upcoming projects and events in your School.
What kind of posts might you see?
- Any issues you encounter whilst studying on your programme
- New ideas or activities to benefit your experience at City
- Questions about where to go for more information or support
- Positive feedback and praise about parts of your time at City that you enjoy
- An experience you've had that you would like to improve for other students
- Anything else you would like to feedback to the University or Students' Union!
Your role on GetHeard@City
Complete training
You should complete training provided by City Students’ Union and the e-learning module hosted by Unitu. Training for new Reps will take place Monday 23 October to Friday 4 November 2023. You can find out more information about the training and book onto a session on the Programme Rep page.
Log in regularly
Once you’ve had this training, please activate your account and log in. You will be able to access GetHeard@City by logging in to the Unitu website or the app. Click “sign in with university details” and follow the account activation process. You will need to agree to the content policy which you can also read here. Once you’re trained and logged in, you can get posting and moderating your private spaces as soon as possible!
Respond to students
You should respond to students and provide updates on posts. As a rep you can comment "as an update", which boosts your comment and notifies the students who engaged with the post. You can use this to answer students’ questions with the correct information, to signpost students to the most relevant place to get support, and to update students on the next steps for their feedback. You should respond within 3 days.
Update & escalate
In the private section a post will get likes, dislikes, and comments from students and other reps. If you (or another rep) can answer it, share an update and close the post. If it needs staff interaction or needs to go to a committee meeting for further discussion, it should be moved over to the public board. This is where staff can assign posts to the relevant person, add posts to committee meeting agendas, respond to questions and close posts, and move things into the "in progress" section if a post needs more thought. You should escalate posts from the private to the public board. As a rep you decide which posts need staff involvement. You should escalate posts within 3 days. Staff should respond within 3 days of the post being escalated to the public board.
Moderate the Boards
All reps are moderators in the boards and you oversee the collaborative academic community between students and staff. You should moderate inappropriate content, including offensive, disruptive, and abusive posts and comments. As a rep you can respond to the student and ask them to edit their comment, and you can report and remove content with or without giving a strike to the author. We would recommend using the three strike-policy to make sure discussions are kept respectful. You should ask the student to edit or remove posts and comments that are abusive, harmful, or offensive - use your judgement based on the context. You should always let us know about any incidences of bullying, harassment, or data breaches.
Top tips for getting the most out of GetHeard@City
Download the app
GetHeard@City is available online or via app. As you’ll be regularly checking the platform, you may find it easier to download the app onto your phone (if you are able to). This might make it easier to check in on your Boards, respond to students, and you can receive push notifications.
Customise your notifications
The default setting sends you notifications about posts regarding your programme and your year. You can customise these notifications to receive more or fewer notifications via email or push notifications.
Introduce yourself
You will notice that you have a “Rep” badge attached to your account -this makes it easy for students to recognise you. However, we would recommend creating a post at the start of your role to introduce yourself and let students know who you are, what you do, and how you can be contacted.
Regularly check up on your Boards
Students should trust you to have correct and up to date knowledge about your programme and navigating City and trust you to address their issues and feedback with staff. Please make sure you are taking some time to regularly check in with the platform and read all of the posts in your Board, including the comments, and respond to questions and concerns where necessary. Make sure to “post as update” so that students are notified that you have responded.
Maximise engagement
Posts with lots of likes and comments are more likely to have reached a wider audience - this means you will get a wider range of opinions and figure out the majority view. Posts which have more engagement will get attention from staff and will more likely be prioritised, as they have a bit more weight to them. You can get engagement by leaving the post in the private section of the Board for a few days, provided you update students on why you are keeping it there. You can also use the “boost” function to notify students about the post and encourage them to leave likes and comments.
Escalate posts to aid you in meetings
You should be escalating posts into the public section as part of your role to make sure that staff are made aware of student feedback and issues. They cannot see posts while they’re in the private area so they can only address issues once the post is moved over to the public section. We would also recommend escalating posts to make staff aware of topics you want to bring up at Student Staff Liaison Committees and Student Experience Committees, as staff can put the items on the agenda and prepare in advance.
Summarise feedback and update students when you escalate posts
When you are ready to escalate a post to the public section for staff to interact, make sure to “post as update” so that students can hear your thoughts and know what is happening to their post. When you escalate posts, you can support staff by summarising the post and letting them know the main themes in the discussion.
Promote GetHeard@City
There are lots of ways that students can ask questions, raise issues, and give feedback, and we would recommend using mixed methods to collect feedback from the students in your programme. The posts on GetHeard@City are likely to cover a broad range of topics, so be clear to students about what the platform is for. We would recommend encouraging students to use GetHeard@City and also posting feedback on there that you’ve collected from elsewhere.
How to contact us
GetHeard@City is new for us too! We want to hear about how you are using it and if it is working as it should. If you have any questions, issues, or feedback, you can contact the Representation Team via studentrep@city.ac.uk.