Student Engagement Week... What was it all about?
So, last week saw Brighton SU's first ever Student Engagement Week, aka
I <3 MY EDUCATION.
Arguably one of the most successful campaigns we have done at the SU, it was visible at each campus every day of the week and was designed around the principles of celebrating the different pockets of good practice across our vast institution, and engaging our membership into becoming a critical partner in their education, rather than a passive participant! As well as giving the students an informal route to tell us exactly what they thought about different aspects of their educational experience at Brighton Uni.
We focused on different aspects of the academic experience, and had each day of the week dedicated to representation, quality resources, a graduate career, feedback and learning & teaching.
Having received over 1000 pieces of 'Keep, Stop, Start' feedback from students, this contributes towards part of the research for the upcoming QAA Student Written Submission, as well as fully equipping all of our Union Representatives with student feedback on issues that actually matter to them.
With feedback ranging from library opening and accessibility, to fish and chips on a Friday! The variety was huge, and gave incredible insight to the different issues affecting students on different courses and campuses!
We are now the process of coding all the data we received, and will soon begin the analysis!
So all in all, an brilliant success! A boost for BSU! And an epic amount of academic engagement with our membership!
I am incredibly proud of everything that we have been able to achieve, and all I can say for now is watch this space!
Thursday 23 February 2012
Monday 9 January 2012
Student Feedback - is the NSS effective?
So,
"Is the NSS a truly effective method of collecting Student Feedback?"
This is the question on everyone's lips (well academic geeks like myself) at this time of year.
And of course, with a question like this, comes a lot of different opinions, stance points and answers.
An argument against the effectiveness of the NSS is that it does not encourage student feedback until the end of a degree, when the student who gives the feedback will not see the change as they'd have left University by the time anything actually happens.
This is common throughout University life, especially with regards to Student Feedback and engagement.
It is vital that a student feels engaged in their educational experience throughout the entirety of their degree. It's been proven that engaged students, are happy students, and will generally achieve greater academically, as oopsed to students who aren't engaged. (Zepke & Leach, 2010).
A way of combatting this, is through communication, reiterating the importance of a student voice and what I like to call "completing the feedback loop"
It's easy enough to do, and it simply means that staff, need to actually have conversations with students (heaven forbid!) about what students have told them about their experience of certain things throughout the duration of their degree. This way, when you ask a student to give you feedback again, they might actually do it, as they feel that they are positively engaging in the structures, and having their voice listened to and hopefully acted upon occasionally.
I must reiterate, how important it is to complete the feedback loop, even if an outcome cannot be achieved that the student voice has asked for. If a student has told you something, and a change cannot be made, and this isn't communicated back, you can imagine how disengaged and disenfranchised a student will feel, and then this could lead to a resent of giving their feedback at a crucial time when the University wants it - like the NSS.
Thankfully, I think this discourse might finally be beginning to be taken seriously by the University of Brighton.
With this message being sent to all staff at here:
As you can imagine, I'm glad that this issue is now finally being addressed within the University. And fingers crossed, staff will actually begin to have these deeper conversations with students about the academic experience. And one will hope that it's not just with final year students.
I guess all I can say is "watch this space."
"Is the NSS a truly effective method of collecting Student Feedback?"
This is the question on everyone's lips (well academic geeks like myself) at this time of year.
And of course, with a question like this, comes a lot of different opinions, stance points and answers.
An argument against the effectiveness of the NSS is that it does not encourage student feedback until the end of a degree, when the student who gives the feedback will not see the change as they'd have left University by the time anything actually happens.
This is common throughout University life, especially with regards to Student Feedback and engagement.
It is vital that a student feels engaged in their educational experience throughout the entirety of their degree. It's been proven that engaged students, are happy students, and will generally achieve greater academically, as oopsed to students who aren't engaged. (Zepke & Leach, 2010).
A way of combatting this, is through communication, reiterating the importance of a student voice and what I like to call "completing the feedback loop"
It's easy enough to do, and it simply means that staff, need to actually have conversations with students (heaven forbid!) about what students have told them about their experience of certain things throughout the duration of their degree. This way, when you ask a student to give you feedback again, they might actually do it, as they feel that they are positively engaging in the structures, and having their voice listened to and hopefully acted upon occasionally.
I must reiterate, how important it is to complete the feedback loop, even if an outcome cannot be achieved that the student voice has asked for. If a student has told you something, and a change cannot be made, and this isn't communicated back, you can imagine how disengaged and disenfranchised a student will feel, and then this could lead to a resent of giving their feedback at a crucial time when the University wants it - like the NSS.
Thankfully, I think this discourse might finally be beginning to be taken seriously by the University of Brighton.
With this message being sent to all staff at here:
"The importance of closing the feedback loop
· Discuss with your students issues that have previously been flagged through the NSS or other feedback mechanisms and tell them how this has fed back into their course or school, where improvements have been made or why the issues are hard to resolve.
· Emphasise to students that the survey is their chance to feedback about their overall experience at university.
· Give Students’ Union course reps time to talk to students at the end of a lecture."
I guess all I can say is "watch this space."
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