A focus upon engaging students in the design, delivery and evaluation of higher education is now standard practice over much of Europe, where students have been empowered to work towards meaningful and equitable partnership. UK practice in student engagement has led these developments, where students in roles such as student representatives, students’ union officers, and innovative roles such as Student Partners, have led to countless enhancements at both course and university level. However in the 2024-25 academic year, student engagement through such voice and feedback opportunities face challenges, as established practice becomes ‘business as usual’, engagement practices change post COVID-19, and a global cost of living crisis prevents participation. Our sector must respond with critical reflection to ensure established student engagement practices remain relevant to students, as well as not returning to old limitations such as engaging only the ‘usual suspects’ students. This keynote will ask delegates to reflect on such challenges through sharing critical perspectives from the literature, as well as recent findings from the UK’s QAA funded Student Voice and Representation sector audit. Through sharing practice and research, the session aims to empower delegates to respond to current challenges in student engagement and build foundations for discussions following at the conference.

Liverpool John Moores University has been using Blue Explorance for module evaluation since 2015. Typically, institutional response rates are between 30%- 35%, with a wide degree of variation across programmes and between modules. At the same time, the institutional course (programme) level surveys for first and second-year students were administered through a different platform. Low staff and student engagement with these surveys prompted a need to re-design the approach.  Feedback from staff and reflections of the Survey management team suggested that this was an outcome of limited functionalities for interacting with students and academics, and a low sense of staff ownership.  In addition, reporting was restricted to a spreadsheet available to view and download from the internal business intelligence system, with comments being sent separately.  

Moving the surveys into Blue Explorance, allowed the Survey team to capitalise on increased interaction with students and programme leaders through the VLE (Canvas) and provide dynamic reporting through Blue.  This, alongside a revised timeframe for data collection, facilitated a threefold increase in response rates. The change also triggered further automation of the survey processes in general, including move to one student data source for all surveys.  

 This presentation will outline the changes to the process and delivery of the survey and results. It will also reflect on the next steps and planned developments for this academic year. 

Discover practical strategies and powerful features within Explorance Blue designed to help drive response rates. Join this session to learn tips and best practices for engaging respondents and streamlining survey experiences to maximise student participation.

In this session, the University of Strathclyde team reflect on the opportunities provided for staff support and development throughout their journey to implement an institution-wide approach to module evaluation and maintain momentum 2-3 years on.

The successes and challenges encountered will be considered along with the participant’s perspective.

The team will highlight the resources developed to guide staff through the process and their integration with the STEP (Strathclyde Teaching Excellence Programme), to help staff leverage the insights from module evaluation to enhance learning, teaching and assessment practice. A vital component for engagement, the role of encouraging and reporting on closing the feedback loop will also be explored.

It’s nearly Burns Night after all and Scotland’s national bard encouraged us to see ourselves as others see us. This session adopts a student lens on the complete feedback cycle inviting delegates to consider why students do or don’t engage with our carefully crafted questionnaires. How much do they see of our analysis? To what extent are they invited to be part of the response? And how do you know what they think about any of that? 

Delegates will be invited to share their experiences and the presentation will also draw on Ailsa’s decades of experience of student engagement work, including the UK and European analysis that led to the development of the Student Voice cards produced by QAA Scotland as part of the Evidence for Enhancement sector-wide theme.