HEA Short Guide Surveys for enhancement

Introduction

The shifting economic and political landscape in the UK has meant that all four nations are seeking ways to put higher education on a sustainable footing to underpin competitiveness and economic and social wellbeing.

While approaches may differ by nation, there is overarching agreement about the need for students and the student experience to be the driving force for innovation and change.

Central to achieving this is gathering information about students’ perceptions of their time in higher education to inform enhancements to learning and teaching.

Through our surveys provision to the sector, and related enhancement work, the Higher Education Academy (HEA) supports institutions in gathering and using information to improve the experience of students at all levels. Nationally, the results also help to inform sector bodies and policy makers about the broad experience students can expect across the UK.

Student experience surveys

Surveys are an important source of information about the student learning experience for institutions and students alike.

The well-established National Student Survey (NSS) gives potential undergraduate students an idea of how previous students experienced their time at university. Through enhancement activities, the HEA helps universities and colleges to use NSS data, in conjunction with other sources of information, to benchmark performance, monitor areas of strength and address areas for improvement. The HEA can also advise on the limitations of survey data. Following unprecedented rises in the number of postgraduate students, the question is increasingly being asked whether postgraduate students may benefit from similar information.

Since 2007, the HEA has led the sector in the provision of postgraduate surveys through the introduction of the Postgraduate Research Experience Survey (PRES) in 2007 and the Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey (PTES) in 2009. The only national surveys of postgraduate students in the UK, PRES and PTES allow institutions to collect feedback on the experiences of their research and taught postgraduate students and to benchmark programmes against national data and that of similar institutions to inform changes.

“The opportunity to measure results of PRES over a long-term period has confirmed a continuing trend of improvement in all areas.”

Tim Baxter, Principal Administrator (Graduate School)Northumbria University

Our work is centred around three different surveys:

Postgraduate Research Experience Survey (PRES) and Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey (PTES)

Between 2003 and 2008, the number of postgraduates rose by 12%, with those on Masters’ courses growing by 27%. In 2010-11, almost 600,000 students enrolled onto postgraduate courses. Largely paying their own fees, many are international, studying by distance learning orpart-time. Their experience is often verydifferent to that of undergraduates.

PRES (biennial) and PTES (annual) enable institutions to gather information about the experience of postgraduate students on research and taught courses respectively. They ask respondents about the experiences of their programme, their motivations for taking their programme, and for anonymous information about themselves – such as age, nationality, discipline and country of origin - so that the experiences of different students can be compared. The results are confidential to the institution.

Both are overseen by an advisory group, whose members include senior decision makers and staff in HEIs as well as sector bodies such as the National Union of Students (NUS).

By taking part in PRES and PTES, and by comparing their own results with the national picture and with groups of similar institutions, providers of higher education are able to identify areas of strength and address areas for development, increasing the appeal of their programmes and the information they can provide to prospective students.

National Student Survey (NSS) enhancement activity

Around two in three undergraduates take part in the National Student Survey, which since 2005 has been completed by almost 1.5 million undergraduate students.

Through a range of enhancement activities, resources and events, the HEA supports institutions in understanding their local NSS data in the light of other sources of information, using the results to inform activities to enhance their learning and teaching provision and to begin meaningful dialogue with students about their experiences.

In 2012, we launched a series of 28 NSS Discipline Reports, each containing discipline-specific analyses of NSS results helping institutions, faculties and departments to evaluate their results in the national context. A new change programme brought departments together to help them explore and improve their students’ experiences, using their NSS results in conjunction with other sources of data.

The NSS Institutional Working Group provides a space for informed and informal discussion and sharing of practice around the opportunities and challenges posed by the NSS. Future HEA activity will include a programme of bespoke institutional consultancy relating to the NSS which will focus on helping institutions to develop and use relevant and robust evidence to guide strategies for learning and teaching.

Our work to inform policy discussions around the nature and use of student experience information is underpinned by evidence and research. For example, we produce research and policy papers around the NSS and student experience data, including the influential Dimensions of Quality by Graham Gibbs. Our own PTES and PRES surveys are supported by research into students’ interpretation of survey questions, institutions’ need for information, and case-studies showing how survey information can best be used to support enhancement.

HEA survey and enhancement activities

“PTES is an important tool for students’ unions to understand the academic experiences of taught postgraduates, and a valuable source of evidence for identifying areas where institutions and students’ unions need to work together to enhance provision for their taught postgraduate students.”

Rachel Wenstone, Vice President, NUS

Why take part?

Enhancement activities

• demonstrate to students, staff and funders commitment to and quality of the taught and research environment;

• support continual improvements at institutional and course level;

• use data to inform decisions in conjunction with other information;

• take data as a starting point for engagement with students and an opportunity to develop partnerships with students around enhancement;

• track institutional, faculty and departmental performance against national data;

• monitor consistency in provision over time and between departments and disciplines;

• use data in guidance to provide information to students about institutional and programme strengths.

Postgraduate surveys

• amass evidence from student feedback to drive continual enhancement to postgraduate provision;

• use data to provide useful indicators of student experience of postgraduate taught and research programmes, and a starting point for further investigation and discussion;

• compare performance against the national aggregate and comparable institutions via anonymised data in benchmarking clubs;

• prepare your institution or programme for any national requirement to survey postgraduate students.

Participation in enhancement activities drawing on student survey data opens up new opportunities to use evidence, intelligence and insight to improve the quality of learning and teaching:

King’s College London

King’s College has participated in the Postgraduate Research Experience Survey since 2007. The university has used the results of the survey to deliver targeted improvements to the researcher experience. By disaggregating data derived through PRES by academic school and by academic department, the survey has enabled King’s College to pinpoint demand among postgraduate researchers (PGRs) for teaching opportunities to be increased, and to identify where satisfaction with research could be further improved through enhancements on affected campuses.

Using data from PRES, the Graduate School was able to successfully lobby the senior management team to fully fund an additional 20 graduate teaching assistant positions and to guarantee training and mentoring for assistants to gain teaching qualifications where desired. The school also signed contracts with organisations offering teaching opportunities with gifted pupils in local schools in disadvantaged areas resulting in over 30 teaching assignments in the first year.

Data from PRES were combined with information from a survey into student aspirations and needs in relation to workspace provision to approach schools to specify and commit to minimum standards they will guarantee their PGRs. This information was published on the intranet so that researchers could see their entitlement and whether this was being met in their department. Where the need for additional space was identified this was fed back to College Estates to work on. This has led, for example, to additional quiet ‘Graduate Zones’ in all libraries to give PGRs greater choice in where they can work.

To read how other institutions have used PRES to enhance the postgraduate research experience, please see the report by Vitae, the national body for professional and career development of research staff in HEIs and research institutes: ‘Using PRES to enhance the experience of postgraduate researchers – a good practice guide’ available at: www.heacademy.ac.uk/student-experience-surveys.

“PRES gave me the evidence to justify investments into these two initiatives. With employability becoming an even more important issue for PGRs these interventions are timely.”

Professor Vaughan Robinson, Director of Graduate School, King’s College London

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© The Higher Education Academy, 2012

The Higher Education Academy (HEA) is a national body for learning and teaching in higher education. We work with universities and other higher education providers to bring about change in learning and teaching. We do this to improve the experience that students have while they are studying, and to support and develop those who teach them. Our activities focus on rewarding and recognising excellence in teaching, bringing together people and resources to research and share best practice, and by helping to influence, shape and implement policy - locally, nationally, and internationally.

1 Institutions must have a valid Bristol Online Surveys licence including survey access control.

Contact us

What do postgraduate surveys entail?

The HEA supports staff in higher education throughout their careers, from those who are new to teaching through to senior management. We offer services at a generic learning and teaching level as well as in 28 different disciplines. Through our partnership managers we work directly with HE providers to understand individual circumstances and priorities, and bring together resources to meet them.

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PRES and PTES have been designed to be user-friendly and easy to administer. They take the form of online questionnaires hosted by Bristol Online Surveys, which students are asked to complete.

Both the HEA and Bristol Online Surveys provide extensive support to participating institutions at each stage, from initial conception through to administration and analysis.

In May each year the HEA runs the Surveys for Enhancement conference, which brings together researchers, survey practitioners and senior decision makers to present and discuss research and practice on the use of student surveys for the improvement of learning and teaching.

The HEA also runs workshops during the year to support PRES and PTES officers delivering the surveys to students and publishes guidance and case studies to illustrate how other institutions are using the results.

Participation is free of charge to subscribing institutions1. Results are confidential to institutions and any published data is at institutions’ discretion. In the case of PTES the survey template can be adapted to incorporate institutions’ own questions and so to tailor the information gathered to institutional need.

Find out more and take part

PRES and PTES will both run in Spring 2013. Institutions can express their interest in participating from September 2012 by emailing surveys@heacademy.ac.uk.

To find out more, please visit: http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/student-experience-surveys. For questions please email us at: surveys@heacademy.ac.uk or call us on 01904 717500.