By Tom Lowe
Working towards improving student engagement in higher education is undoubtably a top priority for every UK university. This blog series has asked questions on how we define student engagement, the activities we should prioritise to be engaging to students, and how engagement practices changing in wider society are impacting engagement in the university. Whichever metric of student engagement you aspire to improve – attendance, grades, satisfaction etc. - it is first important to be empathetic to our learners to gain an understanding of their experiences of education. Therefore, this final blog will focus on the importance of engaging students’ voices in developing the modern university, and in so doing ‘top up our empathy’ for the current lived experiences of students in our institutional contexts.
Student voice in higher education.
Focusing on student voice and feedback in modern universities is not a new concept. From involving students as active citizens within our education systems to recognising them as key members of the academic community, engaging their perspectives has become a widely adopted approach to enhancing the quality of education. When we seek to understand the ‘other side of the coin’ - the student experience - we gain valuable insights that can directly improve both teaching and student services. A clear incentive for prioritising student voice is the increased engagement we see in classrooms and across campus services - a compelling reason in itself. In the UK, there’s also an additional motivation: the National Student Survey (NSS). Questions 22–24 of the NSS specifically address student engagement and feedback, and I’ll use these questions to frame the remainder of this blog. (Spoiler alert: they get more challenging as we go.)
Student voice section of the National Student Survey, UK.
Q22. I have had the right opportunities to provide feedback on my course.
Q23. Staff value students’ views and opinions about the course.
Q24. It is clear how students’ feedback on the course has been acted on.
22. I have had the right opportunities to provide feedback on my course.
Let’s start with providing opportunities for student feedback—arguably the easiest part. In a digitally connected world, creating ways to gather feedback from students is simple. From online polls and module evaluations to university-wide surveys and mobile apps, colleagues can spend as little as an hour designing a feedback method, offer a £50 voucher as an incentive, and watch the student voice roll in. Easy, right? Well, not if everyone in the university is doing it!
Unfortunately, our institutions have become increasingly reliant on digital approaches to student voice. In fact, a simple mapping of existing surveys can reveal between 60 and 100 different feedback methods used across a typical three-year student journey - why not try counting yours? List every university-wide survey, from the enrolment survey to the library survey to the NSS. Then add every module evaluation, every digital tool you use, and tally up the responses. The result is often quite staggering. And then we ask: why don’t students respond? In an age where people are constantly bombarded with requests for their attention, it’s not just our surveys competing for student feedback. Marketing research, product reviews, and even friends’ dissertation questionnaires are all vying for their input. With so many demands on their time, students are overwhelmed with requests for feedback. So while this question may seem straightforward at first, we may actually be undermining ourselves through a sheer overload of student voice initiatives - leading to feedback fatigue and, ultimately, student voice chaos. More on that in Question 25!
23. Staff value students’ views and opinions about the course.
Now things get a little trickier – let’s turn to look at how staff respond to student feedback. For question 23 above, I focused more on digital solutions, but this question delves into how staff receive feedback directly from students – whether in person, via email, or digital student voice mechanisms. This aspect brings to mind the literature on the affective/ relational dimensions of assessment feedback for students and perhaps we can empathise a little here with this experience of feedback. At this point it’s important to define what we mean by student voice. For me, I always return to Adam Fletcher’s definition from his 2017 book, ‘A Student Voice Revolution’, where he describes student voice as being any time a student speaks about their education in any context. Using this inclusive definition of student voice, I encourage readers to consider the less formal, often unrecorded forms of feedback, which are especially relevant to question 24. I wish to argue that student voice begins with students having the opportunity and confidence to speak to staff, whether in class, in an email or in one-to-one meetings. So, when exploring this question of how do staff respond to a tricky bit of feedback in class, we must ask ourselves: how do they handle challenging or unexpected feedback in the moment? Are they open to it? Do they invite students to elaborate on their concerns? Does the interaction foster a deeper conversation about education — or is it quickly shut down, cutting off what could have been a meaningful dialogue?
This question is complex because it also needs to be reflected upon at scale. Ideally, every staff member would value students input whenever and however it arise. However, many of these conversations are difficult to quantify, such as the common situation: “lecturer, the deadline you just said in class doesn’t match the one online?”. We have all had or seen this happen in our time in education. Normally, the lecturer says, “thank you for bringing this to my attention”, and resolves the matter there and then. The more challenging though is the feedback that staff cannot do anything immediately about or has little-no control over, such as “lecturer, why is the room so cold, can’t we put the heating on?”, or “lecturer, we are all struggling with another module- can you help?” How we respond to feedback, whether we can do something about it or not, is important. This is perhaps most tricky in situations whereby students air their frustrations and resistances to doing group work, or learning certain topics. All of these require equal value when they arise, where I recommend again Fletcher’s ‘Five Pathways to Meaningful Student Involvement’ as a framework for responding constructively and valuing every instance of student voice. It’s through these pathways that we can shift feedback from something we react to, into something we build on. Fletcher’s pathways are below:
- Acknowledgement: Saying thank you to students who give feedback.
- Commitment: Committing to doing something about it, even if this is going away and speaking to another colleague. Or this can be committing to explaining why students have to engage in certain activities that are perhaps less popular.
- Promotion and visibility: Communicating that student voice and feedback is important in your context from enrolment, as well as communicating how such feedback is acted upon, more in Q25.
- Empowerment: Ensuring there are opportunities for students to give feedback Q23, and ensure staff are empowered to hold such student voice opportunities with your students, which includes how to act on student feedback outside of their role.
- Expanding conversations: Taking time to ask why do you think that? Can you tell me a little more? What do you think about this issue that keeps arising?
(Fletcher, 2017)
24. It is clear how students’ feedback on the course has been acted on.
Let’s return to the classic scenario of clarifying a deadline when there’s a mismatch between what's listed on the VLE and what's said in class. This is a straightforward example of student voice in action: feedback is shared, acknowledged, and acted upon. Although this is a common scenario, most feedback received comes through a variety of student voice mechanisms in higher education and is rarely solved within that same week. Often a staff member will have to consult with colleagues, both within their immediate academic teams and beyond. In some cases, the feedback relates to issues governed by institutional policy or broader strategic decisions - such as changes to assessment formats - which may not be easily addressed or may not be possible to change at all. Sometimes feedback is also received digitally via a survey and often submitted anonymously and in these cases, there’s no opportunity for a real-time conversation verbally. In all contexts, acknowledging and acting on student feedback is essential to making the process meaningful. This is often described as ‘closing the feedback loop’ - a phrase that sounds simple but is often challenging to implement in practice.
So, what to do about this when addressing Question 25 of the NSS. First and foremost, I would argue that we must be timely – both in when we ask for feedback (ensuring its relevance) and in how quickly we respond. When feedback is given in class, even a brief acknowledgement the following week — perhaps just a slide with a few words — can be powerful. For more substantial updates, a follow-up email or VLE announcement may be more appropriate. At an institutional scale, university communications and marketing teams should play a key role. They should actively communicate institution-wide feedback outcomes, through central comms and to communicate major enhancements (or changes) that have come out of such activities as SU-University collaboration. Communicating changes or enhancements clearly and consistently is key to ensuring students feel heard. Whatever the scale, our approach to closing the loop should be thoughtful, not chaotic. Finally — and perhaps most importantly — we should always have a plan. Every time we ask students for feedback, there should be a clear and timely plan for how we’ll respond. As a sector, we may currently be doing a little too much asking, and not nearly enough responding — even when our intentions are good. Closing the loop isn't just a task; it's a commitment to meaningful engagement.
Topping up our empathy
Whatever practices colleagues are using to support student voice and feedback — they are valid, valuable, and grounded in good intentions. While we are experts in our roles and academic disciplines, we are not necessarily experts in the current student experience. A phrase we often hear in planning committees is, “Well, when I was a student…” which, while offered in good faith, often reflects a context that no longer exists. As I have discussed across this blog series, being a student today is almost certainly not the same as being a student 5 years ago – let alone longer. Today the world is digitally connected, catalysed by AI, and influenced by fast-paced, financially-driven decision making. The student of 2025 enters higher education with motivations, expectations, and lived experiences that may differ significantly from our own. The courses that have been delivered for decades are now being experienced through entirely different lenses. Only by engaging with students can we truly understand how our engagement methods are being received, and by understanding how students engage in the modern university, can we look to align our practices, meet their needs and, ultimately, enhance student outcomes.
This blog series has explored critical perspectives, complex issues, and the sometimes challenging realities of working in higher education. My final recommendation is this: we must talk openly about student engagement - with our colleagues and with our students. Be open about the challenges we face, curious about the emerging scenarios we find our sector in, and brave enough to try new strategies that may or may not work. The higher education we care deeply about is still something to celebrate. But to sustain its relevance and impact, we must be ready to continuously change and adapt as the world transforms around us, in the years ahead.
Tom Lowe has researched and innovated in student engagement across diverse settings for over ten years, in areas such as student voice, retention, employability and student-staff partnership. Tom works at the University of Westminster as Assistant Head of School (Student Experience) in Finance and Accounting where he leads on student experience, outcomes and belonging. Tom is also the Chair of RAISE, a network for all stakeholders in higher education for researching, innovating and sharing best practice in student engagement. Prior to Westminster, Tom was a Senior Lecturer in Higher Education at the University of Portsmouth, and previously held leadership positions for engagement and employability at the University of Winchester. Tom has published two books on student engagement with Routledge; ‘A Handbook for Student Engagement in Higher Education: Theory into Practice’ in 2020 and ‘Advancing Student Engagement in Higher Education: Reflection, Critique and Challenge’ in 2023, and has supported over 40 institutions in consultancy and advisory roles internationally
References
Fletcher, A.F. (2017). Student voice revolution: The meaningful student involvement handbook. CommonAction Publishing.
Lowe, T., Wright, S. (2023). Mapping the Student Experience: A Framework for Assessing Student Support, Success, Community & Voice. Student Success Journal. 15(1).
