In this post, Lauren McDougall and Lesley Ross set out to map the student journey to help students navigate their first year at university. They created ‘Riding the Wave’ – an interactive digital resource designed by current students for new Undergraduate students to simplify the university transition. Lauren was an undergraduate student and Communications Intern on this project, and Lesley is Student Induction Manager in the Pre-Arrival and Induction Team. This post belongs to the Student Partnership Agreement 2025 series.
Lauren’s reflections on the initiation of the project
During the summer of 2024, I worked alongside Lesley Ross and the Pre-Arrival and Induction team as a Communications Intern. Despite entering my final year in Edinburgh, I realised through my internship that there was a wealth of resources available to students which I had no idea existed. While the team was constantly providing concise information to new students, the amount of information available to them before and during Welcome Week was leading to an information overload.
When Lesley proposed working together to create a ‘Student Journey Map’ to help students navigate their first year at University, I jumped at the chance. My main driver for the project, and something I always came back to, was “What would have helped me in my first year at Uni? What do I know now that I wish I knew back then?”.
When I came to the University of Edinburgh in 2021, the combination of COVID teaching and the overwhelm of moving to a new city really took a toll on me. I constantly felt lost in a sea of information, isolated, and confused, and while I knew support was out there, I found it really difficult to find it when I needed it most. As a result, taking on the project felt like a way to help first-year-Lauren and the future students who may have felt the same way as I did starting university for the first time.
What is “Mapping the Student Journey”?
We created a resource for first-year undergraduate students to address the problem of information overload when they start at Edinburgh. The resource is presented as a map, centred around a ‘wave’ to acknowledge the ups and downs students may face throughout their student journey. While all of the information included on the map is already available to students, the guide compiles this information in a concise and easy to access way.
Each stage of the guide talks students through the key questions they may have and asks them how they are feeling at this stage of their journey. Options include: I’m excited; I want to learn more; I’m nervous; and I need help. Students are then signposted to helpful resources and support, such as the Wellbeing Service if they require mental health support, or EUSA if they are looking to join a student society or EUSU Sports Club. As students progress through the year, they can follow the wave and access support at every stage.
Incorporating student voice
Central to the project is the idea that no two students’ journeys will be the same, and that students may not know which stage they are at or recognise what emotions they may be feeling. As a result, we worked to embed student voices through various workshops to incorporate a variety of experiences in the final product and understand how students would use the resource in practice. During these workshops we identified the need for a single launch page for all student support resources, to speed up access. As a result, we created a webpage that groups support services together by subject, helping students find the help they need, when they need it.
We also worked with the EUSA Sabbatical Officers and other members of staff to understand any blind spots and ways we could get the map in front of students. This helped us revise the guide and add new information about different University services which we had initially missed. The Sabbatical Officers also took the time to reach out and offer further support for the project.
The Student Journey Map content was now completed and had also been reviewed by members of the Orientation and Induction Continuous Improvement Group, staff in Communications and Marketing, Student Experience offices and by other students. It was so positively received, and the next stage was to create a digitised version for students to access it online throughout the year.
Lesley’s continuation of the project
I felt privileged to work with Lauren again, a bright and enthusiastic student who provided great insights, energy and talent to translate our research about typical student transitions into a useful resource for helping new students at the most relevant points in their student journey.
We used the funding from the Student Partnership Agreement Fund to pay for Lauren’s time and supplemented this with team time to source a digital solution for presenting this work. It was designed to be interactive, attractively presented, inclusive and accessible to students before, during and after their studies. I reached out to the University’s Design Community and gained insights into what was technically required, and then discovered the Graphic Design team within ISG.
Designing the tool
A crucial part of the design process was, again, including the student voice. After a consultation with the design team, I was able to present three mock-ups that we used to brainstorm next iterations.
The final product
I am extremely proud of what we have achieved and delivered for our new undergraduate students. The Riding the Wave map can be found here: Riding the wave.
Next steps
Since its introduction at the end of August, the map has been viewed over 3000 times. This tool is the first visualisation that the University has created to normalise the transitional experience for new students. It represents the beginning of potentially multiple versions for other levels of study, for different groups of students. It could be stretched to include the applicant stage and designed to be relevant to graduates too.
For now, we are hoping to make new undergraduate students aware of the journey map and encourage them to return to this resource when they need it, signposted by staff responsible for supporting students.
Lesley Ross
Lesley is Student Induction Manager in the Pre-Arrival and Induction Team, Student Experience Services. She is an experienced manager in leading and developing collaborative initiatives and innovations to support all students transition into University. She is wholeheartedly dedicated to ongoing development and enhancement to cultivate a positive and impactful student experience. Her passion lies in improving the collective approach to communication strategies and activities that support a positive transition, aligning efforts with the broader goals of the University.
Lauren McDougall
Lauren has recently graduated from the University of Edinburgh with a 2.1 in Politics, and she is now studying Media, Communications and International Journalism (MSc) at the University of Glasgow. Her career goal is to continue developing skills in journalism and communications, which she has already developed through work as a News Editor at The Tab Edinburgh, and as a Communications Intern at the University of Edinburgh.
