In May this year we published our first ever print edition of the Hoot for our Students in Secure Environments (SiSE). As these students do not ordinarily have access to the internet, they had not been able to read or contribute to The Hoot before receiving the printed edition in the post. The plan was to publish a new printed edition every 6 months, aiming to keep our SiSE colleagues in the loop of what’s going on and to make them feel more connected to their wider student community.
We are happy to announce that the second edition has now been finalised and posted out to each secure facility who have OU students in their care.
While the first edition was a collection of past Hoot articles previously published online, we wanted to build on this for the second edition by including some new, bespoke content of particular relevance to the SiSE audience. So this edition includes a newly written article by one of our Library Study Volunteers about their work helping SiSE with their research needs, a page focusing on findings from the recent Students Association SiSE survey, and a specially penned version of the recent Samaritans article that featured in the online Hoot, focusing more in depth on Samaritans in prisons.
In May’s edition we also invited students to contribute to the November edition and we’re happy to report that we were taken up on this by one student. In their article ‘A Splash of Colour’, they lament the use of monotone in printed OU materials and the printed SiSE newsletter they had received. It’s a brilliant insight into one of the challenges these students face in undertaking their studies; a challenge that perhaps many of us don’t fully consider when we read from a screen in pleasing colour. You can read about the reasons for monotone materials and a solution that we hope will help, in our response to the student included alongside their article in the newsletter.
In this latest edition we again invite students to contribute to the next publication, planned for around May 2023. As we did last time, we have included pre-paid envelopes with the newsletters so that students can post their writing to us free of charge, and we have also suggested a way they may be able to arrange for their contribution to be emailed to us on their behalf. We would love to receive some more contributions from SiSE for our next edition, as the one we have published this time really helps to bring the newsletter to life.
We hope that the latest print edition of the Hoot helps our Students in Secure Environments to feel included, part of their OU student community, and up to date with what’s been going on here on The Hoot. And we hope that in reading this article and the newsletter, you in turn feel more connected to your SiSE colleagues as well.
You can download a pdf of the full newsletter from the Students Association website, and we have also now made the bespoke articles written especially for this printed SiSE edition available on The Hoot online as well:
SiSE survey highlights
A splash of colour
World Suicide Prevention Day & Samaritans – SiSE edition
Being a Library Study Volunteer
Materials, including the latest newsletter sent to Students in Secure Environments (SiSE) must be in black & white. We explain why in the article 'A splash of colour'.
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