NSS and Student Engagement: What I Learnt from Swansea University

As I continue to write new blogs for this site, I have also been reviewing some of the blogs that I wrote in my seven years as Pro-Vice Chancellor and I have chosen to rewrite them as an occasional series of what I have learnt from my time at Swansea University.

Over the last seven years Swansea continued to do very well in the National Student Survey, especially in terms of the student’s overall satisfaction, which remained consistently one of the best in the UK throughout my time at the University. Now NSS is undergoing some significant changes and the sector is asking whether it continues to be fit for purpose. In the light of that, I have gone back over some of my reflections during my time at Swansea and distilled what I believe we learnt about doing well in NSS.

Swansea University can undoubtedly be very proud of their consistent record on the overall satisfaction score, but we were always aware that there were issues in other parts of the survey that we needed to address. What I thought might be useful in this blog, therefore, is to offer a few more general comments on the NSS and what it does, and does not measure, and to outline one or two of the things that we undertook to address the concerns that such surveys raised.

The first thing to note, and to constantly keep in mind, is that the NSS is a ‘satisfaction survey’ and that what it measures is ‘student satisfaction’. We may question exactly what this is, or how this is interpreted by students. We may want to raise issues with the methodology, or the statistical questions that underlie such a survey. Others have done this over many years, and on the whole, while we know there are issues and concerns, the NSS has become established and it does measure something – student satisfaction, a sense of belonging, the commitment of students to the university or their course, levels of frustration at things going wrong – and that the regular reporting of the results to the same questions over a number of years provided a good test of how our students saw the University and various elements of their learning experience. While we must not be fixated with absolute numbers, trends up or down were certainly worth noting.

One thing that became very clear from our experience across the University is that when things go wrong, and when students become frustrated at failures of the system (at whatever level) this can have a significant effect on the scores. Such frustrations can be avoided by careful planning, although not all systems are under the control of local programme teams and mistakes can occur at all levels. We have discovered, however, that it is often the speed of our response, the reassurance that we can give to students that issues are being sorted out, and the strong message that we are listening and responding to concerns, that can go a long way to mitigate against unforeseen events. We learnt that we had to do all that we could to avoid anything that might seriously frustrate students in the first place and be quick to respond and sort problems out when they occur.

Beyond this basic level of professionalism, competence and engagement I think that we were generally very clear about what works, at least in a broad sense, and what does not; what it is that raised levels of satisfaction across the various categories of the survey. I have watched programmes and departments within the University turn themselves around and we have all learnt a great deal from what they have done. Not everything will work in every programme, but we can, I think, identify a few basic principles that, when applied within any particular programme, could significantly improve the scores.

That was the thinking behind STEP4Excellence that was initiated as a programme when I first arrived at Swansea. We used the first year to engage with students and staff across the University, to learn from our own experiences and to explore what was happening in other institutions, and to develop various strategies that could begin to be implemented through the following years. It is not, however, the specific details of STEP4Excellence that I want to develop in this blog, it is more the principles that lie behind it and what we have seen working in different parts of the University.

Student engagement is key. Having both formal and informal mechanisms by which students can express their concerns, know that these concerns are being listened to, see that something is happening, and recognise the changes that have been made as a consequence. Where this has worked particularly well is where informal mechanisms – fortnightly gatherings, drop in sessions, etc. – have supplemented the formal processes. Not every student concern is appropriate, or can be addressed immediately, but it is the fact that there is some line of communication, that the students are given an honest answer, and that those concerns that can be addressed easily are addressed, that makes all the difference. What is more, if such spaces exist and lines of communication and trust are opened then students feel involved in their learning, can often make suggestions that are well worth taking on board, and the sense of community within the programme can be enhanced.

The second area is student support. There were far too many written responses over the years from the Student Experience Survey (our internal survey that mirrored NSS and was delivered to first- and second-year students) that expressed a sense of isolation and loneliness. Students have to feel that they can approach staff across the university and that they will be listened to. We could not all deal with the issues that may be raised, and we had specialist services to pick these up. We did, however, try to make it easier for all members of the university to know where to turn, to know how to contact those who can offer support, and to look out for signs of stress and concern among those who turned to us. We introduced Academic Mentoring and a Student Life Network to provide the kind of support that a University like Swansea should be providing. This was not, however, an unmitigated success and we have, more recently, had to revert to a more traditional personal tutoring system because resources were not available to support the Student Life Network in a way that met the increasing demands of students.

Finally, teaching and learning. The NSS does not measure teaching quality per se. It asks questions about how good staff are at explaining things, whether staff make the subject interesting, levels of enthusiasm and whether the course is intellectually stimulating. Students know when they are learning well and when staff take the time to enable their learning in effective ways. NSS is not a beauty contest rewarding the staff that resort to showmanship or dumbing down. Students know what they are at university for and can recognise shallow teaching engagement when they see it. What the NSS questions reward is teaching that engages with the students, includes them in their own learning and enables them to see clearly what it is that they are gaining from the experience. This is, of course, much easier in small groups than in large lecture theatres and we were all aware of the challenges that growing numbers of students offer in this area. We aimed to work together, therefore, as a community, to explore new and innovative ways, as well as building on what we already knew worked well, to engage with our students and to support them in their learning. That, however, is the subject of a different blog.