University of Tasmania, Australia

What is 'Students as Change Agents'?

Students as Change Agents is an ambitious scheme that lets you take an active part in making your time at UTAS even better. You can identify areas you want to improve, and then research solutions with your fellow students, which we’ll help you put into action.

What can you change?

We’re interested in changes that you would like to make to any aspect of your university experience. This might include:

• improving employability
• investigating ways to enhance student engagement in lectures
• improving academic assessment and feedback practices
• investigating how seminars can be run to make them more useful
• integrating new technology into lectures and other teaching
• improving writing skills
• integrating sustainability into learning and teaching

What do I get out of it?

The voice and opinion of the students is the driving force towards improving yours, and other students', university experiences. You will be working in a unique way to support change in your School or unit. This will be highly valued by your School, fellow students and may impact on future students for years to come.  You may even have an impact that reaches far wider than your School.

The most obvious thing you get out of taking part is the improvement itself; this might be something tangible like new technology in a lecture theatre or a guide to academic writing, or something more abstract like a new procedure or way of doing something.

But being a Change Agent is about more than that; you’ll be developing research, project management and communication skills that will make you much more attractive to prospective employers. You also get the satisfaction of knowing you’ve successfully left a legacy for future students to benefit from and be inspired by.

How does it work?

There are several ways you can get involved with Students as Change Agents. Most easily you can raise ideas you’d like to address via your School's Students as Change Agents Staff Representative to get an idea of how you might be able to take it forward. Staff Representatives will be nominated following the Students Matter Forum in September 2013.

After this there’s a short application form to complete; submitted ideas are considered by the Student Evaluation, Review and Reporting Unit. Once an idea is approved, you’ll be given help to start running your project, which will involve researching the issue thoroughly, managing communications and developing practical solutions.

There is more information about how Change Agents works, and how you can be a part of it, on our Get Involved Page .