This document discusses student voice in course evaluation and the importance of authentic student partnership. It argues that surveys alone do not fully engage students and can promote a consumerist approach. True partnership involves students co-designing, co-producing, and co-evaluating their learning environment. This would provide mutual accountability and enhancements informed by both student and staff perspectives. The document provides examples of how partnership can be implemented, such as involving students in survey design, focus groups, and action research. It also outlines tests to determine the authenticity of partnership practices.

1. Student voice in evaluation
Ellie Russell, Student Engagement Partnership
Manager
ellie.russell@nus.org.uk

2. About TSEP
A strategic partnership across
the English HE sector
agencies and representative
bodies.
An NUS-hosted staff unit
delivering projects, research
and practitioner support.

3. The big challenge
How to engage students as individuals as they
experience a personal intellectual journey, while
systematically understanding and enhancing the
quality of the learning environment at the level of
the course, faculty and whole institution.
Course evaluation must be able to generate
comparable, systematized information and be
authentic to individual students and staff working
across diverse subjects and contexts.

4. Is quality learning happening?
• There is emerging evidence to suggest that not all students are
achieving a truly transformative experience in UK higher
education.
• Overall satisfaction levels and scores for the quality of teaching
staff remain high in the National Student Survey, but lag behind
in areas defined as ‘high impact’ learning activities: quality and
frequency of feedback, academic support and interaction, clarity
of expectations, and course organisation.
• 61% of students feel that their course is at least in some ways
worse than expected, and the most common reasons are poorly
organised courses, a lack of support in independent study, and a
lack of interaction with teaching staff (HEPI and HEA 2015)

5. Partnership
Derived from the insight that learning has to be a
partnership. Ultimately, it is the effort and engagement of
students that leads to learning success.
Giving students greater or equal responsibility in the
decisions, policies and activities that make up the wider
learning environment or the university as a whole.
Partnership asks students to co-design, co-produce and co-
evaluate their environment, moving beyond learning and
teaching to encompass the whole institution.

6. What should partnership produce?
Partnership is best expressed as a culture of a
higher education community. “A way of doing
things, rather than an outcome in itself”.
So you would expect it to produce something
other than a warm and fuzzy feeling.

7. Enhancement through partnership
The infrastructure for teaching and learning does not stand
still – partnership can produce changes and enhancements
that build a dynamic and inclusive learning community.
Students and staff working in partnership at every stage of
the enhancement cycle.
Institutions and students’ unions mutual accountability for
the approach, infrastructure and outcomes of enhancement.

8. Why involve students?
• Surveys use students’ voices without necessarily engaging
students’ voices
• Tackling consumerist approach to evaluation and embedding
concepts of co-creation
• Transparency and improving their understanding of the role of
their feedback
• Confidence that their feedback is part of a wider and effective
system of enhancement that they have a stake in
• Not just about collecting data, but a development opportunity
for students and a time to reflect on their own learning journey,
not simply their levels of contentment
• Improve outcomes from data and create advocates for changes
that have been made

9. What could this look like?
• Ensure students have a developed understanding of the role of
their feedback in enhancing their learning environment
• Giving thoughtful, constructive feedback is a professional skill
and it needs to be nurtured
• Asking questions that reflect a balance of what is important to
both students and providers
• Involve students in the design of surveys
• Utilise student representatives and Student Staff Liaison
committee meetings to explore issues in greater depth, plan
follow-up actions and communicate outcomes back to the
student body- make it an interactive workshop rather than an
agenda item
• Utilise students as researchers

10. Students as researchers
• Individual and wider benefits
• Social scientific research with students to diagnose issues
or research to support the development of interventions
• Newman: Pedagogies of Partnership
• Winchester: Student Fellows
• Birmingham City: Students as Academic Partners
• Nottingham: Students as Change Agents
• Lincoln: Student as Producer
• Exeter: Students as Change Agents
• Newcastle College: Student Fellows

11. Discussion
• Using the benchmarking tools, discuss areas of practice in your
local context where you know students have raised concerns
(Assessment & Feedback, Academic Support, Organisation &
Management, Personal Development, Learning Resources)
• Discuss ways you currently involve students in course and
module evaluation and how you think this could be improved.
What challenges have you encountered?
• Identify some ‘killer questions’ to interrogate the authenticity of
partnership practice.

12. Tests of authenticity
• Have students been part of creating the agenda or goals,
not just brought in once everything has been decided?
• Are students contributing materially, not just consulting
or providing data?
• Has the process or activity been co-designed or are
students being asked to buy into an existing project?
• Has thought been given to what support and training
students and staff may need to enable the partnership
approach?
• Has there been a significant disagreement at some point?
(You’d hope so!)

13. Further support and case studies
NUS’ Comprehensive Guide to Teaching and Learning
www.nusconnect.org.uk
GuildHE/TSEP report ‘Making Student Engagement a Reality’
http://www.guildhe.ac.uk/
TSEP College Higher Education Toolkit www.tsep.org.uk
Jisc Change Agent Network case studies http://can.jiscinvolve.org/wp/case-
studies/
Visit www.tsep.org.uk for insight, resources, events and sign-up to our
newsletter. Contact us at tsep@nus.org.uk for support with getting your
partnership work off the ground.
THANK YOU FOR COMING