The 'student experience' is defined as the full range of students’ interactions – rather than simply the operation of teaching and learning – with their institutions on their progress from application through to graduation and employment. The management task is to make all such interactions are effective in terms of supporting and enhancing student journeys.
This project aims to assess how the recent changes in HE are affecting and are likely to affect the undergraduate student experience.
The project's research asks the following questions.
- Are changes in the HE landscape leading to changed institutional policies and practices which affect the student experience?
- Are there differences according to institutional types?
- Which managerial approaches appear to be the most effective in leading to enhanced student experiences and why?
While there is no credible single measure of 'effectiveness' in this context the project shows how institutions themselves have defined effectiveness and how far they have achieved it.
The outputs of this study will be of value to staff with formal responsibilities for the student experience in their institutions teachers and institutional managers more widely and other researchers working on this topic. UK activity in this field is of considerable international interest.