How the Open University Empowers Students and Colleagues with the Support Hub
The Company
Meet The Open University
The Open University is a distance learning higher education and research university offering flexible, part-time study options to students globally.
The Problem
Struggles with time-intensive, inconsistent signposting
Student-facing staff often provide varied signposting and support suggestions, with many relying on search engines to find resources. This can lead to recommendations that lack credibility or relevance to the student’s specific needs and context. It’s also a time-consuming process, repeated continually by many staff.
The Solution
Empowering Students and Streamlining Support Referral Processes
Having a single, easily identifiable web link significantly streamlines our support process.
As an organisation, we aim to empower our students to research and identify the options that best suit their needs. By guiding them to NSN’s Support Hub—both through conversation and across our digital platforms—we ensure they have access to reliable and credible resources.
The Results
Positive Feedback and Improving Colleague Wellbeing Too
We’ve received positive feedback, particularly from our tutor community, who appreciate having a single, reliable source for signposting students. Several tutors have shared that access to the Support Hub relieves them of the pressure to personally find appropriate support when students disclose personal issues, allowing them to focus more on their primary role.
NSN offers a comprehensive resource hub that addresses many of the issues we encounter with our students. Implementing NSN across our digital estate has been seamless and swift; we simply added some encouraging text and the NSN link.
The newly created email sign-off banner has been well received, with many of our Mental Health First Aiders also adopting it to promote greater awareness among colleagues.
