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Amidst the ongoing efforts of tertiary institutions to enhance the student experience, there is a growing buzz around a key concept: student voice.
Student voice, in essence, encompasses three fundamental elements:
The importance of student voice is widely acknowledged, yet many institutions struggle to implement it effectively. Often, they remain stuck in simplistic and outdated approaches, such as end-of-unit surveys or large-scale co-design processes, which are challenging to sustain and integrate continuously. For these institutions, student voice becomes nothing more than a strategic item on a checklist, appearing in reports without becoming a cultural and practical norm.
How can student voice be more widely embraced within higher education institutions? These key strategies will amplify student voice and foster an exceptional student experience and thriving learning community.
The primary challenge for institutions lies in seamlessly integrating student voice into everyday activities. Institutions must recognize that student voice is not an add-on or a one-time exercise; it needs to be ingrained in the fabric of institutional life.
Starting with the learning and teaching model, institutions should ensure that student reflection and timely feedback are integral components of the overall educational delivery. By posing one or two crucial questions during a class, educators can effectively prompt students to reflect on their learning and contribute to its progression.
Supplementing this continuous feedback approach, lecturers and tutors can periodically check in with students throughout the semester, using a targeted set of questions to understand their experiences and identify areas requiring additional support. This approach involves a small number of specific questions spread across the semester, rather than relying solely on a lengthy survey at the end of a unit, which benefits only future student cohorts.
Implementing this approach not only yields valuable data for educators to reflect upon and adapt their practices but also signals to students that their voices hold significance. When students witness their viewpoints being acted upon, they become more motivated to contribute further, thereby cultivating a reflective and vibrant learning community.
Institutions should pinpoint key moments that significantly influence students' overall experience. For instance, early in the semester, institutions can gauge students' adjustment and set them up for success by using kiosks or tablet devices in libraries or service centers to collect feedback on the service experience.
Leading institutions, with whom Ziplet collaborates, have prioritized student voice during work placements, recognizing their crucial role in students' success. Lightweight technology can be employed to comprehend students' experiences during placements and evaluate whether those experiences align with their expectations.
One challenge with student voice initiatives is the perception that most students do not actively engage in them. However, this is not due to a lack of willingness on their part, but rather because institutions often make it time-consuming (through lengthy surveys or co-design sessions) or fail to demonstrate that students' voices will bring about meaningful change.
To address this, institutions must develop lightweight and ongoing methods of involving students in student voice activities. Implementing check-in tools in classrooms or seeking feedback on the broader student experience during pivotal moments can elicit valuable reflections from students with minimal effort.
Following student voice initiatives, institutions must establish a disciplined and focused approach to reporting changes. Unfortunately, very few institutions have structured mechanisms in place to communicate the impact of student voice initiatives and the resulting changes back to their students.
Reporting should occur not only at the institutional level but also at more localized levels, such as in classrooms or individual services. The more comprehensive and transparent the reporting, the more likely students will be to activate their own voices organically.
For institutions, the question is not whether to invest in student voice but rather how to invest. Institutions must make it easier for students to express their opinions while resisting the temptation to point to specific outputs or one-off exercises as sufficient examples of embracing student voice.
Until institutions commit to continuous, lightweight, and scalable student voice programs that allow all students to participate easily, they will not truly listen to their student population. At best, they will hear from the loudest voices, but not necessarily the most representative ones.
In an increasingly competitive environment, this becomes critical because if institutions fail to listen, someone else will step in to fill that void.