For our final Coventry Campus ‘In Conversation With…’ event, we welcomed the School of Economics, Finance and Accounting (EFA). The panel answered some faculty-based questions for students.

The panel consisted of:

• Dr Philip McCosker - Associate Head of School for Quality and Accreditation
• Dr George Hulene - Associate Head of School - Student Experience

The event was chaired by Maryam Ali from CUSU. We picked out three of the key questions from the event below…

The last time we spoke, you were gearing up for possible trips and guest lecturers, and there was a big push on promoting the work that talent team was doing to find people, job opportunities and placements moving forward. What else should students be keeping an eye out?

I really cannot stress enough the importance of staying in touch with the Talent Team through Talent Connect, the platform they're using. We send out a lot of communications to students; there's a lot of emails that we're sending out. The vast majority is extremely important to students in terms of their academic performance.

We really like the approach the team are using with Talent Connect. It’s a platform which is centralizing the entirety of their work that they're doing for our students. They have placement opportunities, internships, opportunities, graduate schemes, the Opportunities Assessment Center, mock assessment centres, mock interviews, events where you can actually book support for your CV writing, cover letter writing, psychometric testing. These are all things that we can keep sending students in the emails we send out.

Students can very easily take ownership of that experience and engage in Talent Connect and go onto that platform and tap into all those resources. I really cannot stress enough the importance of using that that platform.

During the summer, we have Enhanced Futures coming up. I am not too sure on the details. Do you have any information on that that you could share?

Yes! Enhanced Futures was advertised on all of our AULA pages around two weeks ago, then was advertised again last week because it has opened again. The events are open and students should register for those events because they deliver - I don't want to say training - but they help students and hands some of their skills. They're really fantastic sessions and I know personally of students who enrolled for a vast majority of them. It's organised on a first come first served basis, so if you don't engage with those soon, unfortunately you will miss out.

I know that exams are now going to shift towards the online platform. How is this going to affect the student experience? What kind of things do students need to be aware of, and has it already started? Is it going to start?

Exams in EFA in April are going to be more complicated than they have been previously.

If you look at the exam timetable, we've got a separate exam timetable for those modules that receive accreditation from professional accounting bodies. The last couple of years we've had online exams, with a four-hour window where you take your exam and submit it through Turnitin. That will continue for some modules and for modules that receive accreditation from accounting bodies. We had to break those into two different areas.

So first of all, those students have been studying on campus; they will take their exams on campus, so that will include the ‘traditional’ handwritten exam in a room with invigilators, all the desks and so on.

We are aware that there are a number of students who, for various reasons, weren't able to come back to UK, mainly because of the COVID situation. They have been studying online from their own countries and what they're going to do, they're going to use Inspira. Inspira is software that invigilates you and it is incredible software. I watched it do a practice test a few weeks ago. The software records you whilst you're typing your answers. If you turn your head, it flags up. If you were to leave your desk, or were to look down constantly, again it flags that up.

If someone talks to me during example, it flags it up. When you go into the software at the start, it takes a photo of you. You then show some photographic evidence. It compares pictures just taken of you with the ID photo. You also talk to the computer; you have to say something, and it records your voice. That way, it can pick up on someone else in the room who might be giving you help.

The whole session during which you take an exam is recorded. You will be given the exam or brief released to you at the same time as the recording begins. As students on campus, you've got the same period – however, you're typing your answers rather than handwriting them. It's a bit like Microsoft Word, in that if you need it, you've got tables to make things neater, you can present answers better, add financial statements, etc. And then at the end of the session, it stops automatically.

Thank you to everyone who took part in all of our ‘In Conversation With…’ events this semester; a full summary of all events is available here. A full transcript and video will be made available shortly.