The new website Quality Indicators for Learning and Teaching (QILT) is now online. It allows students (and others) to compare universities and disciplines in the form of graphs using data from the University Experience Survey, Course Experience Survey, Employer Satisfaction Survey and Graduate Destination Survey.
Some comments so far……
The problem here is that the University Experience Survey was designed for allocating performance-based funding to university’s, and most of the questions were at the university, rather than course level.
For instance, let’s consider “students support” for students in Maths and Science. What comes to mind when you think of this? Contact time with staff, availability of additional academic support, well produced notes, online support, quality of virtual learning environments?
No, none of these.
Here are the questions students were asked:
To what extent have you received support from your university to settle into study?
To what extent have you experience efficient enrolment and admissions processes?
To what extent have you felt induction/orientation activities were relevant and helpful?
To what extent have you found administrative staff and systems available and helpful?
To what extent have you found careers advisors available and helpful?
To what extent have you support services such as counsellors, financial/legal advisors and health services available and helpful
Have you received appropriate English Language skill support?
These are important questions, but to present them as a single mean & error-bar on a course-specific student support comparison is misleading to say the least.