1. Dr Gina Pauli Department of Psychology University of Roehampton
Institutional and Subject Excellence: Students as customers or partners?
Dr Gina Pauli
Department of Psychology
University of Roehampton

2. Workshop Outline
Exploring attitudes, behaviour and experience arising out of conceptualisations of students as customers and partners
Encouraging students to become partners in teaching and learning
Measuring outcome: Can we do better than measuring customer satisfaction?

3. A tale of two Higher Education landscapes...
Cut-backs in funding
Massification and diversification of the study body
Greater scrutiny and regulation of HE
Students as fee-paying “Customers”

4. OfS: The four primary regulatory objectives
All students, from all backgrounds, and with the ability and desire to undertake higher education:
Are supported to access, succeed in, and progress from, higher education.
Receive a high quality academic experience, and their interests are protected while they study or in the event of provider, campus or course closure.
Are able to progress into employment or further study, and their qualifications hold their value over time.
Receive value for money.

5. “Students as partners is a concept and practice whose time has come
“Students as partners is a concept and practice whose time has come.” (Healey et al, 2016)
Students as co-learners, co-developers, co-inquirers, co-developers, co-designers
Genuine power sharing
Openness to new ways of working and learning together
Challenge to traditional models of HE relationships
Constructive response to policy drivers emphasizing the importance of student engagement and teaching quality
Challenge to the prevailing discourse of students as consumers of HE

6. What is the impact of ‘students as customers’ and ‘students as partners’ understandings on learning and teaching from students and academic staff points of view?
Students
Academic staff
Students as customers
Attitude?
Behaviour?
Experience?
Students as partners

7. Students as Customers Students Academic Staff
Expectations, rights and entitlements
Paying for a product/commodity/outcome
Focus on acquiring a degree/best grades with the least expenditure of time, money and effort
More litigious (activism turned inwards)
More likely to see HE as a means to an end rather than an end in its own right
Academic Staff
Teaching as ‘performance’
Need for tight control over the ‘product’
Need to ensure student satisfaction at all costs
Fear of negative evaluation
May discourage constructing challenging learning opportunities

8. Students as Partners Students Welcomed into a community of practice
More likely to foster deep engagement with subject and university
Empowered to become independent learners
Focus on learning process
Academic staff
Authentic teaching
Inclusivity
Can take risks
Can provide challenging learning opportunities
Can relinquish some control over teaching and learning to students

9. What learning and teaching practices encourage working in partnership with students? What practices discourage partnership work? What are the drivers?

10. NSS: A measure of teaching quality?
To inform prospective students about the views about the quality of their higher education experience of current students (UCAS via Unistats website, HEFCE)
Accountability of sector in receipt of public funds in terms of quality of students’ courses (HEFCE)
Quality Enhancement: to initiate dialogue with students on how to improve their experience (Universities, HEA)
KPI on TEF
satisfaction with teaching = perceived quality of teaching = quality of teaching

11. Customer Satisfaction Feedback UK Holiday Company
Roehampton University UK
Customer
Satisfaction
Feedback

12. Evaluation of learning and teaching practices
‘Students as customers’ creates a conflict of interest with service providers resulting in a complaint culture (Furedi, 2009)
Students should be given a greater voice and a say in how HE environments operate (Cuthbert, 2010)
Learning resources x Teaching quality
Teaching facilities
General Learning environments
Administrative structures
Campus resources
“Our findings seem to indicate that students may not always be the best judge of their own learning experience and what helps them in achieving the best outcome. “ (Rienties et al, 2016, p.340)

13. What KPIs could be used to evaluate learning and teaching practices instead?

14. Squaring the circle
Need to address students’ disquiet with being told to understand themselves as customers on the one hand and the need to be open to unfamiliar ways of thinking and challenging learning situations on the other
Need to address issues arising for staff wishing to construct challenging learning situations, which may cause temporary discomfort, and the requirement to ensure students are ‘satisfied’ with their learning experience

15. Any answers?
Please me

16. Students as Partners
Students as co-learners, co-developers, co- inquirers, co-developers, co-designers
Genuine power sharing
Openness to new ways of working and learning together
Based on values of authenticity, inclusivity, honesty, reciprocity, empowerment, trust, courage, plurality, shared responsibility
High levels of active student participation
High levels of student control over learning and teaching

17. Students as customers
All students, from all backgrounds, and with the ability and desire to undertake higher education:
Are supported to access, succeed in, and progress from, higher education.
Receive a high quality academic experience, and their interests are protected while they study or in the event of provider, campus or course closure.
Are able to progress into employment or further study, and their qualifications hold their value over time.
Receive value for money.