History students shaping their education rank us in the top ten

A proactive approach to acting on student feedback has helped secure a top ten ranking in the latest National Student Satisfaction survey for our Department of History.

Essex is now 7th in the country for overall satisfaction, with 96.8% of our history students expressing overall satisfaction with their course, up from 89.7% last year.

Deputy Head of the Department, Dr Andrew Priest, puts the rise in satisfaction partly down to a more targeted commitment to listening to students. He said: “Diversity and inclusivity are the core drivers for our Department. In our teaching that means offering a wide range of subjects and varied approaches to understanding the past, but it also means introducing positive innovations in the Department which give our students a chance to shape their learning environment.

“We’ve introduced a weekly newsletter to tell students what’s going on and what action we’ve taken in response to their feedback, and all our modules now have an informal mid-term feedback session so that students can tell their tutors what’s going well and what they think needs tweaking.”

Dr Priest has also praised the dedicated teaching staff for their commitment to making history about the present and the future as well as the past: “At Essex, we have a group of lecturers who are all doing incredibly diverse research, ranging across the globe and exploring many ways of understanding and doing history.

“This is what we emphasise to our students – that being a historian is about engaging with real-world issues that are extremely relevant to what’s happening now.

“We’re delighted that the students have responded so positively to our teaching, and to all the other things we do in the Department. Staff always work hard to deliver the best student experience and it’s really pleasing to get such positive feedback.”