Just a few weeks left to complete the National Student Survey! Take the survey now! Tell us about your experience! Around the country final year students are being bombarded with messages about making their voices heard.
We’ve known for a long time that NSS only captures part of the student experience. It’s a moderately useful snapshot for checking on student experience in the (increasingly narrow) areas it asks about and provides a national public dataset that can do some helpful work in benchmarking and informing regulatory intervention. But since its inception it has been afforded totemic status far in excess of what it deserves.
Worse, it has created perverse incentives that can shape student feedback practice inside higher education institutions in ways that actively contribute to student disengagement. How so? Well, many institutions have adopted the NSS questions for internal surveys – a bit like a dress rehearsal before they are invited to complete the real thing in their final year. Worse still, while students are asked to complete the same generic list of questions at the end of every module, they report little or no awareness of how their views are acted on. Failing to close the feedback loop with students sends the message that their views aren’t taken seriously. It deprives them of the opportunity to offer a thoughtful reflection on their learning. And it takes the possibility of addressing problems out of the equation entirely.
It’s time to dethrone socialising students to respond positively to NSS in favour of feedback mechanisms and processes that create a dialogue with students. When students are asked to share insight with their institution they should expect to be asked questions about things that matter to them and that have meaning to them. And they have a reasonable expectation of being listened to and responded to in a timely way – something that can only happen if they have been asked questions that actually support a decision-maker taking action in response.
