The results of the biggest survey of the year are in and we wanted to make sure you were aware of the highlights.
From January to May you might have seen promotional material encouraging final year students to fill out the National Student Survey. This survey is fed into by students across the country, not just Staffs, and gives universities and unions an understanding of how students are feeling and what they like and don’t like.
In August all institutions receive their data for analysis and after many hours of poring over the data, here are some of the highlights:
· Your Students’ Union’s satisfaction score has risen by one percentage point to 72%. Business School scored us at 84%, the School of Education scored us 79% and three other schools scored us at 76%, which is great. However we did less well in the School of Film, Sound and Vision (66%), the School of Nursing and Midwifery (56%) and the School of Computing (63%). We will be working on plans to improve those scores for next year.
· Your University’s satisfaction score has risen by one percentage point to 84%. The University did very well with the School of Psychology, Sport and Exercise (88%), the School of Computing (87%) and the School of Art and Design (87%). However it did less well with the Business School, the School of Engineering and the School of Social Work, Allied and Public Health as they all scored it 79%.
· Academic feedback is again a problem for a lot of courses, with many scoring particularly low around feedback being received quickly and the level of detail in the feedback. A lot of courses complained that the feedback did not help them to clarify things they did not understand.
· The organisation and management of courses continues to be a problem, with students complaining about poor communication about changes and the general organisation of courses.
· Generally across schools, the School of Art and Design and the School of Education seemed to perform the best. The Law School and the School of Film, Sound and Vision seemed to be the two worst performers, based on averages across the scores.
The officer team are working with its staff to understand the data as best we can and then we intend to publish a blueprint for change, detailing the data from both the National Student Survey and the Student Viewfinder Survey and what we will work with the University to change for the better. Watch this space.