The future of the student voice? Policy, principles, practice

Advance HE’s Connect Benefit Series throughout the month of June 2021 will focus on the student voice – how higher education institutions value and represent the student voice and commit to using it to drive positive change.

The activity will culminate in a virtual webinar in late June titled:The future of the student voice in a post-NSS world? Policy, principles, practice.

Bringing together policymakers, practitioners, students and sector commentators, the event will discuss the immediate future of the student voice in light of the high profile reviews of both the National Student Survey (NSS) and the Teaching Excellence and Student Outcomes Framework (TEF), and will consider how best to capture the student experience in a way that links through to quality while ensuring students themselves feel their voice is heard.

There has been discussion by some around the administrative burden that student surveys allegedly create, and debate about how student satisfaction links to quality; however, we believe that student feedback is a powerful tool for change, and we want to provide a platform for our members to collaborate and share new and innovative practice which represents the student voice in a way which drives forward the discussion on quality.

Invitation to showcase your student voice

Leading up to our webinar at the end of June, we are keen to showcase examples of best practice from our members across the UK and internationally. We are looking for examples that can help to raise the profile of the student voice by spotlighting the vital role it plays in driving collaboration between students and staff and enhancing provision. These examples will serve as a key reference point in our webinar event providing a practical counterpoint to the policy debate.

In particular, we are interested in work undertaken at your HEI which is collaborative, creative, with real evidence of impact, demonstrating how both students and staff have got behind and benefitted from the initiative. The examples or case studies should provide an overview of the work you undertook, the challenges encountered, the solutions found, and the changes that occurred, or are reasonably expected as a result of your initiative.

Surveys, measurement tools, qualitative research and other techniques have a key role to play in capturing the student voice, so we are open to hearing about any of these examples and more, but we have outlined below some suggested aspects which you may wish to consider for your submission.

• The pivotal role of the Sector-wide surveys: The future of the National Student Survey (NSS) is currently being debated, but for many institutions, sector-wide surveys represent a vital component of the student feedback strategy. How has the NSS, or another sector-wide survey, helped create true collaboration at your institution, and how has this made an impact on the quality of provision?

• Representing the Postgraduate Voice: How do you collect feedback from Postgraduate students? How do you encourage buy-in across the organisation to commit to doing this? What issues has this feedback identified and how has this been addressed?

• Going beyond surveys and metrics: How else do you capture the student voice. What works best? What has the most impact? Which initiatives have achieved the most traction with students themselves?

Advance HE has a diverse membership base and we are keen to hear the opinions of the wide range of our members.