The Student Room

TheStudentRoom.co.uk

The Student Room (often abbreviated to TSR), established in 1999, is a large United Kingdom based community and social learning website for school and university students. It claims to be the no.1 UK education site according to Comscore media metrix web statistics.

It connects students with other students so that they can make more informed education choices, get help with their studies, and get support with student life.

As of January 2014, the site has over 1.35 million members and 45 million posts, and gets over 6.5 Million visitors per month.

In May 2013 the site incorporated versions of sites MarkedbyTeachers.com and GetRevising.co.uk to form a new social learning section called Learn Together.

MarkedbyTeachers.com

www.markedbyteachers.com uses selected examples of real student work to help students learn. It has 150,000+ pieces of work written by UK students, of which many are also critiqued by UK teachers or peer reviewed by students.

GetRevising.co.uk

www.getrevising.co.uk contains a broad range of supplementary social learning tools including flashcards, quizzes, word searches, mindmaps, crosswords, revision notes, quiz searches and revision cards. Students create their own resources which they can then share with peers.

Get Revising is also home to a study planner & revision timetable creator.

Awards

The Student Room also runs its own annual "Student in a Million" awards, to identify inspirational UK students. In 2013 David Willetts MP, Minister for Universities and Science, presented the awards whilst also opening The Student Room's new Brighton office.

Partnerships

The Student Room Group has a range of high profile partnerships in the student information space.

Executive Leadership

The Student Room Group is run by Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Chris Newson, along with his leadership team, Pete Barnes (Chief Operating Officer), Marcus Palmer (Chief Financial Officer), Dave Ray (Chief Marketing Officer), and Rob Hardy (Sales Director).

Other Employees

There are around 55 employees largely based out of their Brighton office.

Notable employees include Pete Taylor (username "P") - the longest serving staff member, Warren Oates (username "RK" and Head of Operations), Jack Wallington (username "Captain Jack" and Director of Community"). New staff member and admin: Damian Posener ("Dez").

Shareholders

Chris Newson (username "ChrisN") is the Chairman, CEO and largest shareholder of The Student Room Group.

Volunteers

The Student Room sites are run by a team of over 150 volunteer Section Leaders, Support Team Members, Community Assistants, Wiki Support Team Members, Personal Statement Helpers, CV Helpers & Specialist Advisers

Section Leader

Section Leaders are long standing model TSR users handpicked for their understanding of TSR and their leadership skills. They specialise in and oversee a specific section of TSR and work closely with the Support Team in that section. The majority of a Section Leader’s time is taken up responding to specific user enquiries and providing support and leadership to the other Support Team members. Section Leaders have the final say on moderation matters. They work closely with the Community Team and the entire user community making sure the Members interests are adequately represented.

Support Team Members

Support Team members are active and respected members within a specific forum or group of forums. They are selected for their keen interest and positive contributions within that area of TSR.

Support Team members are responsible for the day-to-day organisation, moderation and wellbeing of their site area(s). This encompasses everything from patrolling the forum for inappropriate or incorrectly placed posts and threads, dealing with disputes to answering queries and developing articles on the Wiki.

In addition, Support Team members work with users in their site area to make recommendations to the Community Team on improvements that could enhance their sub community on TSR. This could be updates to the forum; but also wider resources such as articles, blogs, photos, partnership suggestions etc.

Community Assistants

Community Assistants support the Support Team operating in a particularly 'admin intensive' area of the site. They are responsible for keeping their specific forum area orderly, by moving posts, merging threads and tagging threads appropriately.

Community Assistants are chosen either by the members of TSR within a sub-community of the site (in the case of the House of Commons and the Model UN) or by the Support Team (in the case of the Personal Statement forum assistants) to perform an important auxiliary role.

Wiki Support Team Member

The Wiki Support Team (WST) are members who have shown an interest in the Articles section of the site. Part of their role means they are responsible for patrolling edits that are made to the articles to ensure there is no vandalism or advertising occurring.

They also are active in editing the articles themselves and may try to coordinate efforts within the wider site community to develop certain groups of articles. In addition the WST takes a role in discussing the development and improvements to the articles section in the About Wiki forum.

Personal Statement Helper

PS Helpers are university undergrads or graduates who volunteer to help other students who are planning to apply through UCAS with the wording of their Personal Statement.

TSR Members can submit a draft of their statement that they would like critiqued into one of the Personal Statement Helper Forums. Only PS Helpers are able to see any of these submissions.

Anyone can apply to become a PS Helper, as long as they are at University or have graduated.

CV Helper

CV Helpers are usually people have entered full-time work who volunteer to help other Members who are planning to apply for jobs through the wording of their CVs and cover letters.

TSR Members can submit a draft of their CV or cover letter that they would like critiqued into the CV Helper Forum. Only CV Helpers are able to see any of these submissions.

Though there are currently enough CV Helpers, anyone may become one once you have entered full-time work.

Specialist Advisers

Specialist Advisers have a particular specialism or expertise that enables them to impart reputable and credible help to TSR users. They may be people from TSR or from outside of the community who help out by share their knowledge and experience with others.

A TSR Member may be approached by Admin to become a Specialist Adviser if they have demonstrated that they have a positive persona on the site and are suitably knowledgeable about a topic covered in one of the TSR forums. Alternatively Admin may approach an external professional partner to provide a Specialist Adviser service into an area that it is felt into which real benefit could be given.

The Student Room Sections

The main sections of the site are:

The site is designed as a place for UK students and those looking to study at UK universities to find information about studying, courses and careers. There is however a significant international element (who have their own sub forum).

Another section of the site allows members to use a free personal statement checking service for university admissions. Members may post their personal statement in a forum ready for checking. For privacy, only the poster and members of the checking and administration teams (the former consisting of students already at university) may view the statement.

For paying members, there is a hidden section consisting of around two hundred arcade games and competition league tables, as well as a secret sub-forum. There are also several other benefits to subscribing to the service, which includes access to Learn Together (see above), custom User Titles and larger avatars.

The Student Room Discussion

A large part of The Student Room is the discussion forum, of which the major sections are:

In total the whole site has well over 300 forums and sub forums.

Model House of Commons

The "Debate and Discussion" section of the forum also hosts a Model Parliament based on the UK Parliamentary system. The Model House of Commons [MHoC] is run by an elected Speaker and is made up of 50 MPs who create and vote on legislation including bills, motions and petitions. Anyone is free to join the MHoC and they can do so by applying to one of the seven parties that operate there: the Labour Party, the Conservative & Unionist Party, the Liberal Party, the Libertarian Party, the Green Party, the Socialist Party and UKIP. These parties have no affiliation with any real-life party and can have somewhat different ideological stances to real-life parties of the same name. The MHoC has also recently created an off-site MHoC wiki, tsrmhoc.wikia.com, which details the parliamentary system, positions and institutions, as well as publishing biographies of senior members. A governmental term lasts 6 months.

The Student Room Articles

As well as the forum, the site has developed its own wiki: the TSR Wiki. Written and edited by students on a range of academic, university, careers & life subjects. This provides a reference source for prospective and current UK students on matters of institutions, examinations, courses, applying and going to university, student travel, night life, careers and health, and other general topics of interest to students. Two of the largest sections of the wiki provided a wide range of revision notes, covering many subjects from GCSE level through to University level. It also offers dozens of examples of personal statements used to apply to UK universities and colleges. The most popular part of the wiki at the moment however is the Model House of Commons section which provides details of the MHoC Constitution, Hansard and details of all the parties.

History

The forum was created in around 2001 under the name "UK Learning" as a site for students at university to talk to each other. Since then the forum has grown in popularity and developed into a forum consisting of dozens of sub-forums and thousands of new posts daily. In late 2004 the forum saw a change to its present name of "The Student Room".

UK Learning was originally a portal site, the purpose of which was to push traffic towards profit-oriented sites offering various educational resources such as sample coursework, essays and personal statements. The remainder of the site was a vBulletin-based discussion forum, most of the content of which was derived from usenet posts to which users of the forum could respond through the forum rather than via a usenet client, which enabled the site to rapidly build content (and thus search engine driven traffic) while having only a small user base.

Thus, UK Learning/The Student Room has never been a profit-oriented site in itself, though as noted above it does attempt to generate income in the form of optional subscriptions paid by users of the site, advertising banners and voluntary donations from users as a means to offset the large running costs of the site. The connection to the aforementioned profit-oriented sites can still be seen on The Student Room but are no longer the focus of the site.

In mid-2002 the portal aspect of the site was dropped in favour of focusing the site around the discussion forum, and the site has remained roughly in this state since.

In early 2006 the company which owns TSR was taken over. This new owner, known as CN, set about adding advertisements to the site in order to generate revenue for the running costs. This angered several users as a fundraising drive had recently been held, placement of the advertisements was widely considered intrusive and detrimental, and some of the advertisements were arguably inappropriate.

In mid-2006 the owner, CN, detailed ideas for the future of The Student Room; as part of this, CN met a small group of the moderators at a meeting in London. Many ideas were put forward and plans discussed, and over the next few months preparatory work took place for The Student Room to undergo a facelift with the addition of many improvements to attract new members, and on 19 September 2007 the new look website was launched.

Media coverage

In summer 2004 the forum was also the subject of media coverage after examination questions, from papers yet to be sat, were leaked onto the forum. The user claimed the questions were sample exam questions based on the Edexcel Mathematics exam he was sitting the next day, and asked for help from other users.

In May 2007 the site was heavily quoted by the BBC in an article relating to problems faced in an OCR A Level Biology Practical exam after reports to the media from an unnamed member. Some users on the site appeared to have been told far too much about the practical exam by their teachers while others heavily criticised and complained about the difficulty of the exam afterwards. A similar incident was reported in May 2008, again following discussion on OCR Biology A2 practical exams.

Following A Level results day in 2007, the wiki section of the site was mentioned in an article in the independent about preparing for university. It mentioned how TSR has a pretty much exhaustive list of what a student had to take to university with them.

The site was also mentioned on 16 August 2007 in 'crucial contacts' list for higher education on Nottingham Evening Post website.

In August 2008, the site was featured in a half page article in The Times as part of their students supplement produced for the A Level results day. The article looked at the content of the site, picking out key features such as the university discussion forums and the personal statement help section.

In February 2009, The Student Room and DIUS (Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills) worked together to produce a resource for people over the age of 21 considering going back to education. The minisite features an interactive map of universities across the country, video interviews with mature students and profiles of members who went to university as a mature student.

In October 2013, the website decided to turn off a feature known as 'negative reputation' (or neg rep for short) which allowed users to negatively rate other users' posts. It was claimed by the moderators that the feature put people off expressing their opinions. The change was met with much consternation, with many users calling for the drastic move's reversal; a few users supported the move as well.