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Responding to student feedback

Responding to student surveys

The National Student Survey

The aim of the National Student Survey (NSS) is to gather feedback on the quality of students’ courses in order to contribute to public accountability as well as to help inform the choices of future applicants to Higher Education. The results of the NSS are available on the Unistats website.The University of Winchester closely analyses the results of the NSS because it takes the opinions of the students very seriously. We’re keen to give students at Winchester the best possible learning experience and so we look very carefully at the things that students give bad – and good – feedback on. We want to learn from our best practice as well as make changes to our bad. In 2009 83% of undergraduate students were satisfied overall with their experience at Winchester, which is higher than the national average, and we did particularly well on staff enthusiasm, the quality of feedback of assessed work, advice on study choices, and developing students’ communication skills. In recent years we have been concentrating on getting students’ assessed work back to them as soon as possible because students’ feedback on this is unexpectedly poor. This means that faculties are giving more support to teaching staff with their marking loads, and now we’re pushing to get the turn-arounds of assignments even shorter.

Student Satisfaction Survey (SSS)

The University of Winchester has been running its own Student Satisfaction Survey for undergraduates for the past 11 years. These take place annually in May, and they are focussed on providing more detailed information than the National Student Survey. The questions cover a wide variety of topics, from employability, student feedback to personal development.

Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey (PTES)

The PTES ran for the first time in 2009, developed by HEA to collect feedback from taught postgraduates in a systematic, user-friendly and comparative way. It uses the same methodology and approach as PRES (the Postgraduate Research Experience Survey). Overall taught postgraduate students at Winchester were very positive about their experiences, 78 per cent agreed that their overall experience of their course had exceeded their expectations – 10 per cent higher than the results from other organisations. The survey will run every other year.

Representation on committees

Students are also able to give feedback through student representatives and their presence on various committees at committees at the University. They give an important contribution that brings a new perspective on many of the discussions that take place there, and staff are really keen to hear student’s views and opinions.