Edinburgh Napier University

  We are committed to creating a culture of inclusion at Edinburgh Napier University. Listening to and respecting the student voice are part of the culture – to be an inclusive university we must have ways to hear every student and work to remove any barriers to sharing experiences and perspectives with us. We use various, predominantly traditional feedback mechanisms but we experience limited student engagement. Working with student representatives showed that they also find it difficult to effectively engage their cohorts. We wished to design a better, more inclusive system for listening to students in the school so we undertook research to identify improvements that would ensure that more, under-represented students are heard.
We will describe how we intentionally developed a research team with student partners who determined, implemented and flexed a statement sorting/ agreement task methodology and undertook data analysis, incorporating their experiences as students. We will share the outcomes and recommendations from the study, which highlight the importance of student safety (anonymity), ease of access (short, asynchronous), timing and closing the feedback loop. Impacts on the university resulting from the study will also be outlined: from student partner recruitment practices to new cross-institutional partnerships and interventions.