1. Timings
5-10 mins: what we will cover and why do we survey students (shout out)
10-15 mins pros and cons of external surveys
15-20 mins surveys in HE
20-25 mins surveys in FE
25-40 mins using surveys for enhancement (slides and discussion)
40-55 mins future of surveys

2. Using Surveys for Enhancement
Kate Little, Student Engagement and Partnership Consultant
Gareth Lindop, FE Engagement and Quality Manager

3. What we will cover Why do we survey our students?
What surveys are out there?
How can surveys be used for enhancement?
What is the future of student surveys?

4. Why do we survey our students?
Throw the question out to the room.

5. Why do we survey our students?
To understand what they think
To gain measurable data
To measure the success of interventions
To track trends over time
To anonymously gather feedback
To investigate demographic differences
To delve deeper into a known issue
To identify issues to campaign on
To compare ourselves to others

6. Why are external surveys important?
Independent of the institution
Comparable across institutions
Build a national picture
Contextualise internal surveys
Consistent over time, comparable across years
Rigorously validated questions
Address issues of concern to the whole sector

7. Some downsides of external surveys
Can be a blunt instrument
Not tailored to institutional context
Misused for performance management
Lack of context for quantitative questions
Comparing apples with oranges?
…triangulate them with local and qualitative data for the best glimpse of the whole picture

8. Surveys in Higher Education

9. Introduction to the NSS
The National Student Survey is a survey of academic experience aimed at final year undergraduates at HE and FE institutions across the UK.
Over 400,000 students this year were asked to complete the 5 minute survey.
The NSS is an annual survey open to all final year full time undergraduates, as well as part time students in their 4th year of a higher education course. It has been running since 2005 and it is the 3rd largest survey in the UK. It runs in all publicly funded higher education institutions in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, and participating institutions in Scotland. Further education colleges that have directly funded higher education students are also eligible to participate.

10. The 23 questions Teaching 1 - 4 Academic support 5 -9
Assessment and feedback
10 – 12
Organisation and management
13 – 15
Learning Resources
16 – 18
Personal development
19 – 21
Overall satisfaction 22
The students’ union* 23
These are the areas that the survey asks questions about. There are also optional additional banks of questions that institutions can choose to add on, and institutions or students’ unions can also create up to two customised questions for their institutions.
There is also a box for free-text comments where students can say anything they want about their experience.
Which of these areas do you think is the highest? Lowest?

11. Key Points 50% response rate is required!
Run by an independent organisation, Ipsos-MORI
Three stages:
Online
Telephone
Postal
Students can opt-out at any point
50% response rate is required!
23 individual responses
HEFCE commissions an independent organisation, Ipsos-MORI, to run the survey. It is run between January and April and and institutions can choose their start date within a 6 week window, based on whatever works for that institution.
There are three stages to the survey. First there is an online stage. Students can either go proactively to the website, or they will receive an inviting them to participate. Then if they haven’t filled it in, Ipsos-MORI will contact the student by phone and give them the option to do the survey over the phone – they will contact them up to 3 times. And finally they’ll send a questionnaire in the post. At any point during this process students can opt out, of the survey; if they do this then they obviously won’t be receiving phone calls or receiving the postal questionnaire.
One of the really important things to know is that in order for results to be published, there needs to be a 50% response rate. This applies nationally, it applies to every institution, and it also applies to different courses within institutions. There also need to be at least 23 individual responses as well. This is why promoting the NSS is such a big deal, because if the threshold isn’t reached, you won’t be able to find out the results. 11

12. Results Unistats website www.unistats.direct.gov.uk/
For prospective students and their advisors
Threshold criteria: Minimum 23 responses & 50% RR
Internal results site
For institutions and students’ unions
Threshold criteria: Minimum 11 responses & 50% RR
Can also view free text comments

13. The NSS Cycle Promoting the survey Handover and planning the NSS
December - April
Promoting the survey
August-November
Using your results
May - August
Handover and planning the NSS
August – results!
Analysing and sharing your results
Here is the basic timeline of the NSS. It is kind of a cycle and actually right now we are in this section, handover and planning. So, part of that is you being here and you would also hope that some guidance is incorporated in any handover document you have. And you also want to make sure that the NSS is part of your plan for the year, so setting aside now about when you’re going to discuss promotion strategy in the autumn, when you’re going to look at the results in august or september, things like that. You also might want to look at last year’s nss results to see what your campaign priorities should be for the year.
And then the next thing will be August when your NSS results come out. So before then, you need to make sure you have sorted out your password for the results website, which you can do through filling in a form that we have online. Throughout the autumn, you’ll want to go on to the website to check out the results, share the results with course reps and students, do some analysis of the results and maybe think about what other sources of data you have that you can combine with them, and start to plan how you will use the results in your campaigns.
Then the survey begins in January, so from December to April you will need to be promoting the survey. So that will involve explaining to them why it’s important, how they can use it, and you want to emphasise online participation since it is the most straightforward way. You will probably want to discuss your promotional plans with the institution so you are working together with them and have a coherent strategy. And you can keep track of response rates using the NSS extranet website.

14. Headline Results 2005 2012 2013 The teaching on my course 77 86
Assessment and feedback 59 70 72
Academic support 67 79 80
Organisation and management 69 78
Learning resources 76 82 84
Personal development 75 81
Overall satisfaction 85
Students’ Union 66
Here are the headline results, for 2005 which was the first year of the survey, and then for the past two years. You already learned through the quiz about how the areas are doing in relation to one another so I’m not going to spend a lot of time going through it.
You will get your results broken down by department, but you will want to look at the number of people who completed the survey and make a judgment whether you wish to share this information with your course reps. If you are not comfortable, use the higher level subject data from the Unistats website.

15. Postgraduate surveys PRES and PTES Run by the Higher Education Academy
Every two years
Institutions opt in
Results are not public
Institutions see their own results and anonymised benchmarking data
Enhancement focused
New for 2014: question on students’ impact on decisions about their course

16. (International) Student Barometer
Run by i-graduate, institutions pay to use
International or broader
Two waves: October and March, tests experience against expectations
Covers many aspects of the student lifecycle: admissions, teaching and learning, living experience, support services, recommendation
Results are not public: each institution receives detailed results, anonymised benchmarking data and aggregated international data
Only global survey of students’ experiences

17. Other HE surveys NSSE/UKES – HEA pilot Internal satisfaction surveys
Module evaluations
Students’ union surveys
NUS research
But remember the golden rule: surveys are only as good as the data you triangulate them with!

18. Surveys in Further Education

19. Surveys in FE Learner Satisfaction Survey (FE Choices)
Learner View (Ofsted)
QDP Learner surveys
NSS

20. Using surveys for enhancement
How could you use this data to improve students’ lives?
What other data could you use to strengthen your argument?
Group discussion for 5 mins

21. Using the NSS: case studies
Teesside: worked with departments to produce action plans in response to results
Staffs: use the results to inform officer priorities
Birmingham: feed results into annual quality reports with recommendations for change
Oxford: used Q23 to lobby for an increased block grant for the SU
Wolves: targeted schools with low Q23 and implemented SU on Tour to improve engagement
Brighton: regression analysis to determine relationship of different aspects of the learning experience to overall satisfaction
Herts: use results to develop their own student experience survey

22. The future of surveys?

23. …in further education
Choice and Public Information v Quality Improvement?
FE Choices review?
Perceived value of surveys by sector?
Competition between similar surveys?
Cost?

24. …in higher education HEFCE review of the provision of information
Purpose and suitability of the NSS
A shift towards student engagement
Whither Question 23?

25. Your thoughts please
Give them sample question 23s for them to discuss the pros and cons of proposed wording and rank them in order of preference

26. Thank You
NSS:
LSS:
PRES/PTES/UKES:
ISB: