Student Engagement:Indicators 5, 6 and 7Dr Sarah WilliamsonHead of Learning and Teaching SupportandSarah IngramStudent Voice Officer

Email:WilliamsonS2@cardiff.ac.ukIngramS1@cardiff.ac.uk

The Cardiff ContextWe aim to monitor and enhance student

engagement and student experience through one body of work

We have 25,000 students in 27 Academic Schools (no college/faculty arrangements)◦can lead to many different systems…

The Cardiff ContextPublished a new Education Strategy in July

2011Students as Partners is one of our three

objectivesThis is described through our Student

Voice Framework (based on NUS/HEA Student Engagement Toolkit)

We measure and improve our student engagement activities using ourStudent Voice Framework

Three Levels of EngagementInvolvement◦Opportunities are provided for students to express

individual opinion, perspectives, experiences, ideas and concerns.

Participation◦Opportunities are provided for students to take a

more active role in a defined activityPartnership◦Collaboration between the University/schools and

students, involving joint ownership and decision-making regarding developments to the Cardiff experience

Through involvement…Students are consulted throughout their

student lifecycle through a variety of University and national surveys. We also ask students to provide feedback through module evaluation questionnaires and provide feedback to their student reps

We continue to report back to students on the outcomes of actions taken as a result of their feedback

Through participation…The Student Academic Representative

system allows student reps to play an important role in the decision-making of the University using feedback from their students

Every year, a variety of student focus groups are conducted to inform University policy developments

Through partnership…We work closely with our Student

Academic CouncilWe benefit greatly from our ongoing, close

working partnership with our Students' Union and its Elected Officers.

This work includes the development and implementation of our Fee Plan and our work this year on developing our Student Charter.

Indicator 5

Higher education providers, in partnership with their student body, ensure through appropriate induction and ongoing support, that students and staff are equipped to fulfil their roles in student engagement in quality systems effectively.

Working with Indicator 5Students and staff need an understanding

of the system if they are going to be an effective part of it

If students and staff have an understanding of how quality systems work, they will be able to provide more relevant feedback

Students and staff need continued support (as well as initial training) in order to extend their knowledge and remind themselves of the system and procedures

Examples of practice – Ind5Annual briefing about Student Academic R

epresentation system attended by a member of staff in each School

Annual Students’ Union Student Rep Training

Online training and website resourcesStudent Charter/Introduction to Uni/

First Hundred Days

Examples of practice – Ind5Annual briefing about student

representation attended by a member of staff in each School:◦Outline the processes and important dates;◦Emphasise developments in the system;◦Discuss emerging best practice from the

schools.

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Examples of practice – Ind5Annual Students’ Union Student Rep

Training:◦ Introduces reps to their roles and

responsibilities;◦Outlines the University and Union systems and

how reps feed into them;◦Elucidates skills that reps will develop;◦Discusses possible campaigns and ways of

engaging students.

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Examples of practice – Ind5Online training and website resources:◦All training materials, campaign tools and

institution information is available on a password-protected section of the student representation site.

◦This is being extended to include online training resources for particular rep roles and equality and diversity.

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Examples of practice – Ind5Student Charter/Introduction to Uni/

First Hundred Days◦A number of ongoing projects at Cardiff will

seek to give all students a better understanding of the purpose of giving feedback and the quality systems at University, so that students have a deeper knowledge of how and why they should get involved.

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Difficulties with Indicator 5 ‘HE providers in partnership with the student body’: the

students do not ensure induction and ongoing support for themselves, therefore this indicator may not be an accurate descriptor of the process.

All students and staff can access the briefing/training and online resources, however, 1/3of the reps attend face- to-face training and only 4/5 of the staff are briefed. Not all reps and staff access the online resources and therefore there are some reps that will not receive any training at all.

Whilst personal ongoing support is provided through the elected sabbatical officer for students and through central University staff for staff in Schools, there are no ‘advanced’ training sessions.

There is no training or continued support for some students who sit on University or School-level committees.

Indicator 6

Higher education providers, in partnership with their student body, share information so that students and staff involved in quality systems have an equally informed voice

Working with Indicator 6Students and staff should have access to

qualitative and quantitative information that the University receives about their performance via student or other stakeholder feedback

The information only needs to be given to students and staff involved in the quality systems

Context and meaning needs to be given to the information that is shared, giving staff/students the raw data is unhelpful

Examples of practice – Ind6Involving student in the module evaluation

processNSS briefings for student repsThe Student Voice on the Education and St

udents Policy Network

Examples of practice – Ind6Involving student in the module evaluation

process:◦Student reps are given the module evaluation

questionnaire information for modules they participated in last year, or are about to participate in. They take this information back to their students, discuss it with them and then discuss it within their Student-Staff Panel in November, agreeing actions that need to be taken as a result of the feedback.

◦The feedback can add context to issues i.e. why there has been a particularly low mean mark in a module and allows students to see their feedback resulting in actions which are then fed back to them. Jump to

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Examples of practice – Ind6NSS briefings for student reps◦The Students’ Union created School-level

briefings for student reps on their NSS figures so that they could compare their department scores to the University and the sector, these were made available to them online, with information on how to effectively use the results.

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Examples of practice – Ind6The Student Voice on the Education and

Students Policy Network:◦As well as Students’ Union elected officers,

around ten ‘ordinary’ students sit on the Education and Students Policy Network, they receive briefings beforehand and are able to make meaningful contributions to policies and projects in their early stages of development.

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Difficulties with Indicator 6Currently schools do not show external examiner

reports to students and are anxious about showing them unedited reports.

Some of the information we get from our quality processes are not student-friendly, i.e. Periodic Review reports, and would not be useful to students in their current format.◦ Should we be looking to have student-friendly versions?

Who should write these?

Indicator 7

Higher education providers, in partnership with their student body, monitor and review the effectiveness of student engagement in their quality systems

Working with Indicator 7The ‘effectiveness’ of students is a lot more

than whether they turn up or not, or whether they are trained. It is difficult to quantitatively measure this impact, as its effects might be subtle and it is also entirely dependent on the individual students. You can take a horse to water...

‘All’ quality systems includes: programme approval and maintenance, School-level student representation, University committees etc

Examples of practice – Ind7Annual ReviewBenchmarkingStudent engagement in University policy an

d projectsStudents awareness of the quality and repr

esentation systems

Examples of practice – Ind7Annual Review◦Every student Chair of every Student-Staff panel

fills in a one page Annual Review form each year to summarise the impact of the panel’s work. This is then written up by the Academic and University Affairs Officer into an Annual Statement which is submitted to University Council.

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Examples of practice – Ind7Benchmarking◦The Student Representation system is

benchmarked against national (NUS/HEA benchmarking tool) and institutional benchmarking tools to understand areas where improvements should be prioritised.

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Examples of practice – Ind7Student engagement in University policy

and projects◦ In the last few years, student engagement in

key policies and projects have been monitored to make sure student consultation events mirror staff consultation events in number and diversity of groups to give students the same impact on key University decisions.

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Examples of practice – Ind7Students awareness of the quality and

representation systems◦ Internal (and national) surveys query students’

knowledge of the representation systems within their department to ensure that all students have the ability to give feedback to their representative. If there is limited knowledge about the system then it cannot effectively engage with students.

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Difficulties with Indicator 7It is very difficult to measure the actual

impact of students on anything, though it is understood that it is important, as this is the main point of any effective system or process.

The Cardiff Approach

If you are interested in learning more about Cardiff’s approach to Student Engagement and the Student Voice please visit our dedicated web pages:

www.cardiff.ac.uk/studentvoice