Welcome Week: Treasure Hunt

Posted on: 21 September 2023 by Dr Gemma Ahearne in Blog

Welcome week has been a blur of activities, and it’s been a delight to see campus come to life with incoming, and returning, students.

As Student Experience Lead for Department of Sociology, Social Policy, and Criminology, and Faculty Lead for Community and Belonging, I was keen to embed some community-building activities into our schedule this year.

Learning from my colleagues in the University of Liverpool Management School, Dr Treasa Kearney, I decided to host a treasure hunt. Colleagues from the Careers Studio and Sport Liverpool helped to supply QR codes and tasks to help students navigate our impressive campus. Treasa and I have argued for campus to be seen as a treasured space in the post-pandemic period.

We need to engage students with outdoor spaces and motivate them with the unique opportunities of being on campus.

The motivation for the treasure hunt was to improve student confidence with accessing spaces around campus, and to make friends on their course from Welcome Week. The hope is that students will then feel more comfortable going into large lecture halls during the first week of teaching, and feel able to utilise the Library at the University of Liverpool, Liverpool Guild of Students, Career Studio, Sport Liverpool, and navigate between buildings.

Working together to find the locations and complete the tasks, this activity gave students the opportunity to problem-solve together in a fun way.

Thank you to SSPC students who braved the rain, and thank you to the colleagues from across the university who supported the event!

If you would like any further information, please feel free to send me an email via gemma.ahearne@liverpool.ac.uk.

Alternatively, I can be contacted via Twitter @princessjack. My research and teaching interests are also listed on my staff profile Dr Gemma Ahearne.