Providers have their own results – it’s the competitions’ they want to see

Institutions are studying their own performance in the Student Experience Survey for 2020, part of the federally funded, and in all ways essential Quality Indicators for Learning and Teaching.

But some are nervously waiting on a release of the complete survey, to compare how they went against the system averages, and direct competitors.

This always matters but this year it is really, really important because 2020 was the year when teaching and learning went on-line.

There is no HE institution in Australia which does not want us to know they did a splendid job in responding to the COVID-19 crisis. And it is especially important for providers who are looking to permanently change the teaching mix, with more on-line and less in-person lectures post pandemic.

Learned readers wise in the ways of teaching and learning suggest overall student satisfaction rates in the SES will be down across the system – not surprising given the scramble to move on-line from March and the general disruption to student lives. The providers to check will be those which went from stationary to flat out in on-line delivery within a semester, (the prospect of an established big on-line provider doing badly is too awful to contemplate).

The market to watch will be Victoria, where students endured the longest and severest isolation experience.

For domestic students, the big issues driving satisfaction scores are expected to have been teaching quality, student support and e-learning resources – which all depended on how much gloom was in the Zoom.  And that means more than student-teacher comms, how uni platforms went at allowing students to collaborate with each other really matters to many.

For internationals, satisfaction will be shaped by these factors but also by a wider-world of pain, – basic survival and being charged for a campus experience they paid for and did not get.

In ordinary times universities that don’t do well on QILT often keep quiet– which is not a strategy for the figures for a transformative year. Especially when the SES will be followed, albeit later by attrition numbers (and won’t the one for the new undergraduate certificates be interesting).

So how long do providers have to get their student experience survey scripts sorted? CMM asked Minister Tudge’s office if there is a release date and was told it’s not set.