Learner Forums - Just what is the point?

Yep... it's that time of year again.

As the trees shed their golden cloaks of brittle leaves and the inky veil of night floats across the wintry sky on your journey home, it can only mean one thing. It's learner forum time at BAES.

Learner Forums were introduced way back in 2010 as a way for our learners to get more involved in the running of the service and provide a platform to speak directly to members of the Senior Management Team. At the beginning they were open forums - no agendas, no pre-arranged questions to discuss and anyone could just turn up and have their say. Now it's more organised - learner reps are nominated by fellow students and represent their classmates' opinions on the selected topics.

These annual opportunities to have your voice heard may be now firmly established a part of the BAES social diary, but do they actually do any good or does anything ever actually change as a result of what's been discussed?

Jasi Bridgman - Head of Learner Services for BAES certainly thinks they have great merit and is keen to keep open this means of two-way communication saying

"Learner Forums are a great way to influence and support BAES to make positive changes to the service we provide. It's essential that we are able to get the learners' views as they often see things differently to staff and provide a different perspective on what we do. 

Learner feedback has been essential in speeding up change and played a big part in improving learning environments by focussing the service on its search for new buildings and carrying out several refurbishments. This also resulted in the creation of learner study areas . As a result of learner feedback we have purchased more tablets for learner use in class so that they can incorporate IT in to all their studies."

So will you be getting involved as it's a great opportunity to have your voice heard and get things changed? Or do you think it's an idea past its sell date and we could be talking to our learners in much better ways?