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In an increasingly competitive marketplace, the ability to deliver a differentiated and world-class student experience is a crucial advantage for any tertiary institution. A better student experience results in increased student engagement, higher completion rates, enhanced reputation, and a stronger base to deliver impact in the community at large.
Yet for many tertiary institutions, a well-articulated and consistently delivered student experience is something that eludes them. In some ways, it is a promise often unfilled.
We were therefore excited to see a recent study tackle this challenge head-on, investigating how tertiary institutions could better fulfill their promise on a world-class student experience through a series of practical actions. The study was deliberately focused on leveraging achievable best-practices that would help tertiary institutions foster a world-class student experience.
For Davina McArthur, study co-lead, a focus on pragmatism was critical: “The title of the study is From Promise to Pragmatism. We wanted to really focus on the practical things that institutions are doing to transform the student experience.” Leaders involved in the study highlighted focus areas that transform their experience, ranging from technology to innovation, and from business process automation to staff capability and culture.
All these levers matter because, as McArthur states, “institutions have increasingly looked to understand how they can deliver not just a good experience, but an outstanding one, giving them a competitive edge by curating a leading experience for all students”. This means drawing on a variety of interventions - a portfolio so to speak - to cover all bases.
For McArthur, the current scope of student experience is wide-ranging: “We often talk about curricula, co-curricular and extracurricular. It needs to be everything from learning and teaching, through to student life. It’s all of the touch points between an individual and an institute, from pre-enrollment right through to graduation and engaging with the university as alumni.”
The leaders involved with the study highlighted the need to consider the experience as one package encompassing academic and social life as well as student wellbeing.
McArthur details how the last few years have “really sped up the process of developing student experiences, when considering on-campus or off-campus support systems and activities, and how those are received by the student”. We now see many things shifting under the umbrella of student experience, from things like orientation, housing, mental health and post-study interactions.
In short, the scope of what constitutes a student’s experience has expanded, and is far from static.
To deliver an outstanding student experience, the focus needs to be on moving toward personalisation. “We are seeing a shift from elite to mass education, and a step beyond that to to mass personalisation”, according to McArthur.
With that comes significant expectations from students. To meet those expectations in an increasingly competitive market, many institutions seek to understand how they can deliver not just a good experience, but a genuinely personalised one. That competitive edge comes from creating and curating a leading experience for all students. McArthur argues that “recognising diversity in students, not just their demographic but also their psychographic elements - why they've chosen to study, and what their motivations are - creates a really outstanding student experience.”
Students are experiencing rising standards of personalisation in many places outside of their education experience, and are now coming to expect that from all areas of their life. It is a missed opportunity for education providers to not be delivering personalisation in this significant part of a student’s life.
There are two significant ways to start thinking about personalisation. According to McArthur, “one is through data, to - in a privacy and ethically informed way - collect and use data about what the student wants, and to then respond to that.”
The second is partnership. Of the 180 student experience leaders involved in the study, almost all confirmed partnering and co-design as an effective approach to driving a good student experience. Curiously, however, only about 5% of these leaders were actually doing things on the ground that could be understood as partnering.
For McArthur, this was a significant finding and she stressed that including students in the design and delivery of a student experience strategy avoids making assumptions about what students really want, and also develops an anchor point to keep referring back to and testing against.
The challenge for many tertiary institutions seeking to implement a world-class student experience is what data to capture, when to report on it, and - most importantly - when to act on it.
The study referred to Salesforce’s 3rd Student Connected Report which highlighted that 85% of students who have a great onboarding experience had a great overall university experience. But how many institutions are explicitly gathering data on this specific experience? How many have made the linkages between onboarding and the overall experience?
For McArthur, proactivity is key. “I think that metrics really need to come right up front. The universities that are doing this well, off the back of their strategy, are saying ‘What are the eight to ten outcomes that we're measuring against?’ Which of these are lead indicators? Which of these are lagging? What can we collect in real time? What are we going to correlate against - things like external benchmarks around national student experience surveys.”
Creating a clear framework almost immediately after or in the process of developing a student experience strategy allows education leaders to deliver the experience they seek through a set of ‘north star’ metrics.
Moreover, having a data framework from day one enables agile processes, allowing tertiary institutions to move with a ‘start-up’ mentality, because they know straight away whether something is working or not. McArthur identified that “tertiary institutions who act quickly to work out what key drivers are impacting student experience and gather data around these” are able to achieve their goals with respect to student experience much faster.
Agility and speed is essential in the realm of student experience because student tenure is brief. It’s important to move quickly, demonstrate change to students and sample responses again, before their enrolment ends so as to positively impact current cohorts of students.
McArthur cited some interesting examples from the study: “The University of Glasgow for example, has feedback kiosks. They'll trial initiatives and then deploy the kiosk with reactions available for people to have their vote on. Getting that really kind of immediate feedback can be important.”
In many ways, technology is a critical enabler of agility. Trying small scale technology integrations as a pilot, or in one area of an institution, and scaling up from there can be very effective. ‘Learn fast and learn often’ is a key mantra for those doing this best.
McArthur is energised by the range of use of technology in the institutions: “There's so many different ways, and the different tools that are emerging are really fantastic. There’s a maturing use of supporting systems such as CRM’s. Then also an increasing use of digital tools that enable student access to the university and student administration services. The range of apps or edtech companies that are working in this space that universities are partnering with - everything from enhancing learning engagement, or something like Ziplet from a rapid feedback perspective - organisations are gamifying how students engage.”
Tertiary institutions must continue to focus on their student experience to ensure their market positioning. However, they must focus not only on what that experience looks like now, but what it could look like in five years time.
Davina McArthur believes there’s two key elements: “The great student experience in five years time will be one that uses data and co-design or partnering approaches. Tertiary institutions will have a really clear picture of the student and what a personalised experience looks like for them. It'll draw on things like technology, third party providers and, and looking for feedback to continuously improve on that experience.”
But while these elements are certain, the last few years have highlighted that student experience is not only critical for the success of tertiary institutions but is one that is continually evolving. Those who move fast and use data intelligently are likely to be the winners.
Nous’s full report from the study ‘From Promise to Pragmatism: Delivering a better student experience’ can be accessed here.