Encouraging students to give their views

Ipsos MORI, who run the NSS on behalf of Office for Students, will now be contacting eligible final year students by email, text, and telephone to encourage participation. But I’d also like highlight the important role staff in schools and departments can play in raising awareness of the NSS, and encouraging our final year students to take part.

Colleagues are working incredibly hard during these challenging times, and this year we want to make sure any effort put into the NSS is as streamlined as possible.

So in brief, here are some ways you can encourage your students to participate, plus some extra resources for you:

• Participation is key. While we’re aspiring to reach 75% participation, we need to achieve the minimum of at least 50% to have our results made available to us, and published nationally on the Office for Students and Discover Uni websites which help prospective students make a decision about where to study.
• Students’ views inform real improvements. At the University of Essex we believe in putting student success at the heart of everything we do, and the NSS survey – plus the UKES for first and second year students and the Postgraduate Survey (a pilot survey commissioned by the Office for Students) for taught postgraduates – gives us the opportunity to listen and respond, and to do things better.
• Remind your final year students that this is an important survey for their school or department, for future students, and for the broader higher education landscape of the UK is really important. Giving their views means they’re a part of something big.
• It’s good to connect their participation back to their home school or department. For example, schools and departments value students’ ideas about course offerings, and feedback can underpin shorter or longer-term action plan.
• Putting students at the heart of this listening exercise means we can use their views to directly improve student satisfaction, and implement more ways to gather feedback, such as through focus groups or in-module feedback.
• We also analyse results at the wider university level to see where other issues come to light, such as issues with the library or IT services.
• The NSS is completely independent and anonymous. It’s run by Ipsos MOR on behalf of Office for Students. Students are invited by email to complete the survey.

Guidance for you

You are warmly encouraged to contact Emma Bates, Student Voice Manager at studentvoice@essex.ac.uk if you need any help, support or guidance.

Resources

Emma and the team are already working closely with school and departments, have shared resources such as good practice guidelines, and PowerPoint presentations and promotional materials for social media.

Guidance for your students

If your students have any questions, please direct them to www.thestudentsurvey.com or they can contact the student email helpline at Ipsos MORI, thestudentsurvey@ipsos.com.

Once again, thank you for all your hard work through these challenging times. I very much appreciate any time you can spend promoting the importance of taking part in the NSS to your final year students.