Understanding And Improving The Student Experience In Higher Education

This book explores the challenges of improving the student experience in higher education through a ‘third space’ perspective. This key text studies a variety of approaches by drawing on higher education policy, interviews with academics working in third space roles in higher education in the UK, France, Germany, Holland, North America and Italy, as well as auto-ethnographic narratives. The chapters consider key topical areas affecting student experience including academic support, assessment and feedback, creative approaches to pedagogy, approaches to supporting international students and students as partners. This work offers further insights into the way in which the ‘third space’ roles are so important to the functioning of higher education institutions and the ways in which the improvement of the student experience is inexorably intertwined with those in such roles. With evaluative and practice-based insights into embedding institutional changes to improve student outcomes, this book bridges the gap between academia and administration and is ideal reading for anyone interested in improving the student experience within their institution.

The book makes an important contribution to the discourse on student experience in higher education. The book includes chapters that cover important aspects of the 21st century student experience. Chapters cover issues such as: new trends and insights on the student experience; the changing profile of students in higher education and performance measures used to assess the quality of student experience, institutional approaches in engaging students, using student voice to improve the quality of teaching, COVID-19 and its impact on international students, innovative partnerships between students and academic staff, student feedback and raising academic standards, the increased use of qualitative data in gaining insights into student experience, the use of innovative learning spaces and technology to enhance the learning experience, and the potentially disrupting nature of student feedback and its impact on the health and wellbeing of academic staff, and the increased use of social media reviews by students.

The landscape of higher education (HE) has dramatically altered in the past 30 years and it continues to evolve and change. More students are entering HE and attending university or college on a global scale than ever before. Supporting and enhancing the undergraduate student experience across the student lifecycle, from first contact through to alumni, is a critical activity in higher education today not only to aid retention and progression but in a highly competitive HE market, the quality of the student experience is pivotal to an institution’s ability to attract students. The student experience encompasses all aspects of student life, i.e. academic, social, welfare, with the academic imperative at the heart of it. However, the increasing costs of delivering HE, a reduction in government/ state funding and constraints on resources means delivering a quality student experience has never been more challenging for those working in HE. Staff at all levels, and across all areas within an institution, are developing and implementing initiatives to improve and enhance the student experience whether they are at the coal face or on the periphery thus making them a ‘Practitioner’ in the student experience. This could include the admissions administrator improving the information available for potential applicants; the academic improving his/her feedback to students or central welfare departments ensuring that their services are being advertised and supported within a student’s home unit (faculty/department/school/course). In this book, the Editor, Michelle Morgan describes how her new student experience ‘Practitioner Model’ provides an organised and more detailed structure; guiding Practitioners in the identification of what they have to deliver, who they need to deliver it to and when they need to deliver it across her six key stages of the student lifecycle: · First Contact and Admissions; · Pre-arrival; · Arrival and Orientation; · Induction to Study; · Reorientation and Reinduction (Returners' Induction) · Outduction (preparation for life after undergraduate study). The Practioner Model offers a new way of thinking in terms of delivering ‘interlinked’ academic, welfare and support activities at the home unit and university level to support the student in their university journey. This book also provides working solutions to real problems in the form of exemplar case studies from the UK and internationally, including chapters from Liz Thomas, Di Nutt, Marcia Ody, Chris Keenan(UK), Mary Stuart Hunter, (USA), Kerri-Lee Krause and Duncan Nulty (Australia). Good practice must be adaptable and transferable because one size does not fit all. It must also be cost effective. And here the authors shows how practitioners can adapt and customise the 40 case studies presented to help them not only improve and enhance the experience of their undergraduate students in their own institution (both full and part-time) but also to support their students’ progression and retention.

Enhancing the student experience, and in particular student engagement, has become a primary focus of Higher Education. It is in particularly sharp focus as Higher Education moves forward into the uncertain world of high student fees and a developed Higher Education market. Student engagement is a hot topic, in considering how to offer ‘value’ and a better student experience. Moreover it is receiving much attention all over the world and underpins so many other priorities such as retention, widening participation and improving student learning generally. Understanding and Developing Student Engagement draws from a range of contributors in a wide variety of roles in Higher Education and all contributors are actively involved in the Researching, Advancing and Inspiring Student Engagement (RAISE) Network. While utilising detailed case examples from UK universities, the authors also provide a critical review and distillation of the differing paradigms of Student Engagement in America, Australasia, South Africa and Europe, drawing upon key research studies and concepts from a variety of contexts. This book uncovers the multi-dimensional nature of student engagement, utilising case examples from both student and staff perspectives, and provides conceptual clarity and strong evidence about this rather elusive notion. It provides a firm foundation from which to discuss practices and policies that might best serve to foster engagement.

What's it really like to learn online?Learning Online: The Student Experience Online learning is ubiquitous for millions of students worldwide, yet our understanding of student experiences in online learning settings is limited. The geographic distance that separates faculty from students in an online environment is its signature feature, but it is also one that risks widening the gulf between teachers and learners. In Learning Online, George Veletsianos argues that in order to critique, understand, and improve online learning, we must examine it through the lens of student experience. Approaching the topic with stories that elicit empathy, compassion, and care, Veletsianos relays the diverse day-to-day experiences of online learners. Each in-depth chapter follows a single learner's experience while focusing on an important or noteworthy aspect of online learning, tackling everything from demographics, attrition, motivation, and loneliness to cheating, openness, flexibility, social media, and digital divides. Veletsianos also draws on these case studies to offer recommendations for the future and lessons learned. The elusive nature of online learners' experiences, the book reveals, is a problem because it prevents us from doing better: from designing more effective online courses, from making evidence-informed decisions about online education, and from coming to our work with the full sense of empathy that our students deserve. Writing in an evocative, accessible, and concise manner, Veletsianos concretely demonstrates why it is so important to pay closer attention to the stories of students—who may have instructive and insightful ideas about the future of education.

Prosser and Trigwell argue that the question to how university teachers can improve the quality of student learning lies in determining how students perceive their unique learning situations. Their book outlines the key principles underlying successful teaching and learning in higher education, and is a key resource for all university teachers.

"This book will change and deepen your understanding of the interactions between the student experience, teaching and learning - a well-designed collection with excellent scholarly coverage of key theoretical and practical issues". -Emeritus Professor Rob Cuthbert, University of the West of England, UK The book explores how national and institutional policies have had an impact on the quality of student experience. Student experience is becoming an increasingly important measure to assess the quality of learning and teaching: the chapters explore how institutions use student experience measures in improving the curriculum, assessments and other learning support. Through examining the definition of student experience within a variety of higher education contexts, the book explores the impact that a high reliance on student experience scores may have on academic standards. The editors and contributors question whether a new emphasis on student feedback as a gold standard for quality measurement may be potentially disruptive to the health and wellbeing of academic staff, combined with the increased use of student social media reviews. Covering topics such as the changing profiles of students in higher education, student voice in improving the quality of teaching, and the increased use of qualitative data, this book will be of interest and value to researchers of the student experience in higher education institutions. Mahsood Shah is Professor and Dean of Swinburne University of Technology, Australia. In this role, he provides overall leadership and management of the campus. John T. E. Richardson is Emeritus Professor of student learning at the Open University, UK. He taught and researched in psychology at Brunel University from 1975 to 2001, when he moved to the Open University to take up a new chair in student learning and assessment in the Institute of Educational Technology. Anja Pabel is a Senior Lecturer in tourism at Central Queensland University, Australia. Her research interests include tourist behaviour, marine tourism, humour research and tourism education. Beverley Oliver is Emeritus Professor at Deakin University, Australia, Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and an Australian National Teaching Fellow. She is a non-executive director at Open Learning and non-executive director at EduGrowth, Australia's not-for-profit acceleration network for high-growth, scalable, borderless education. .

This book focuses on university teachers’ experience of teaching and learning. Following on from the 1999 volume Understanding Learning and Teaching, which focused on student experiences of teaching and learning, this book provides guidance on how teachers’ experiences can be understood in ways which can support the continued enhancement of student learning experiences and learning outcomes. Drawing on the outcomes of a 30-year research project, this comprehensive volume discusses the qualitative variation in approaches to university teaching, the factors associated with that variation, and how different ways of teaching are related to differences in student experiences of teaching and learning. The authors extend the discussions of teaching into new areas, including emotions in teaching, leadership of teaching, growth as a university teacher and the contentious field of relations between teaching and research. “This important book offers an accessible, research-informed guide to understanding student learning and university teaching. Written by two world-leading experts in the field, it provides rich insights and practical responses to the challenges faced by those who care deeply about teaching and learning in higher education.” —Professor Paul Ashwin, Lancaster University, UK "Enhancing discipline-specific evidence-based development of the quality of teaching and learning in higher education has been my strategy during my whole career. Therefore and with great pleasure I read the book by Trigwell and Prosser which distills their teaching and learning research into a guide for those seeking to better understand their teaching environment. Building on their discovery of relations between the ways of teaching and the ways of learning, they expand on what is known about variation in teaching and how it links to course design, to research and to academic development. This book will be a valuable resource for many academics."​ —Professor​ Sari Lindblom, University of Helsinki, Finland “In an international higher education context going through much change and uncertainty, Trigwell and Prosser have produced a scholarly, timely, evidence-based, view of teaching and learning suitable for universities world-wide. The experience, quality and satisfaction of university leaders, researchers, teachers and students will benefit enormously from the ideas in this addition to their first book.” —Professor Robert A. Ellis, Griffith University, Australia