Insights: Findings from Advance HE Surveys: Delivering an experience that meets expectations, and a high quality experience for all

Overview

In the insights team at Advance HE we amplify student voice to make higher education the best it can be and we do this by running two postgraduate student surveys:

• Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey (PTES) allows taught postgraduate students to give feedback about learning, teaching and other aspects of their courses, informing enhancements to their experience.
• Postgraduate Research Experience Survey (PRES) allows postgraduate research students to give feedback about their learning experience, supervision, and research environment, informing enhancements to their experience. 

This event will share findings from the surveys and highlight the areas in which students feel they need more support or ask for changes to be made.

Online interaction continues to be the norm for many Postgraduates. A growing proportion are being taught in a hybrid way but few cite face-to-face engagement as their most common method of interaction. This is a key issue in that satisfaction levels are lowest, and have fallen, among Postgraduates who interact mostly or exclusively online, particularly when not expecting that mode of delivery. Not all Postgraduates prefer in-person interaction, but it is important that everybody embarking upon a postgraduate degree programme knows what to expect, not just in terms of the availability of staff and opportunities to interact with other students, but how this interaction is likely to take place. This session will discuss how the needs of Postgraduates can be met through online, hybrid, and in-person interaction, and will consider whether the key mode of delivery/ interaction impacts on overall trends in the experience.

Knowing what to expect is of particular benefit to postgraduates who have a disclosed disability, where shifts in how teaching or support is delivered has a big impact.[1] Postgraduates with a declared disability are consistently less satisfied than those with no disability, and in the case of Postgraduate Researchers (PGRs) these levels of satisfaction have fallen this year. Although resources are generally praised, disabled PGRs do not necessarily feel the same about their access to resources, and have in some cases had to make a significant effort to obtain the facilities they need. To date there have been lower levels of coverage and research into the experiences of disabled students at Postgraduate level, and this session will focus on understanding the specific viewpoints and needs of this cohort.

[1] Exploring the impact of Covid-19 on disabled students’ experiences: in-depth qualitative report | Advance HE (advance-he.ac.uk)