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I was pleased to sit down for a candid conversation with Lucy Blakemore about student experience.
Lucy spends her time as a researcher and insights professional focused on student experience and transformation in the education sector. Lucy is both expert and experienced in understanding the student experience.
I’ve followed her work for some time and was keen to understand her views on three pertinent questions for higher education institutions:
1. Why should higher education institutions focus on student experience?
2. Where are the largest opportunities?
3. What steps should institutions be taking now?
For Lucy, there are three reasons why institutions should focus on their student experience.
For students, this is one of the most significant life decisions they make. Not only because of the financial investment they make in higher education, but also because of the decisions and opportunities that follow from completion or otherwise of their qualification. Lucy reflects that students often place “time, money, effort and deep emotional investment in their own study.” It goes without saying that for many students their time in higher education is steeped in their own dreams and ambitions for themselves. Their time in higher education really matters to them.
For an institution’s core people – their academics – their entire experience is intertwined with the experience of their students. Academics often pursue teaching because of the intrinsic value they see in students thriving and being their best. And so, according to Lucy, “if you're an academic and your students are having a bumpy and difficult experience that impacts your experience.” In other words, student experience also delivers on job satisfaction for academics – and by extension – supports their retention.
For employers and our broader community, who see the impact of a high-quality student experience. Lucy articulates well the positive flow-on effects from a positive student experience: “if the system is working well and achieving what it should, then employers are getting people with the right skills. We're bringing people into our communities who have the right skills.” Indeed, student experience is not all about making a student happy. It's about how the whole system works effectively to the benefit of everybody.
There is a common thread to Lucy’s work: understanding the importance of human interactions. For Lucy, the stories that students consistently tell relate to their interactions with others. Students tell stories about when “they felt they were listened to when their feedback was taken on board and, and something was done about it.” One of the largest opportunities lays in how we deal with those unexpected things - and understanding these stories and then acting really makes a big difference to how students experience their education.
Lucy also adds that part of delivering a good student experience is avoiding a bad one. IT systems - particularly assessment portals - seem to be a large driver of stress and a negative experience for students. Lucy reflects that “most students can remember a time where maybe they pushed it a bit close to the deadline and then something in the system let them down”. These are some of the most stressful moments for students, and while they may seem trivial, they can seriously impact the wellbeing of a student. A few in isolation may not matter, but certainly a picture emerges once they accumulate over time.
It is perhaps unsurprising, though not at all trivial, that Lucy suggests that institutions should focus more on listening to their students. Lucy makes an important distinction, however, that this means moving beyond quantitative data and spreadsheets and actually trying to understand individual voices. It is in the stories of students that really bring to life the joys and frustrations of their time in higher education.
Indeed, Lucy argues that what makes higher education institutions unique is that their customers are with them every day. Their “students are there the whole time; they're in and around your buildings, they're in your digital systems leaving digital footprints and, and they're on the front lines with your teachers. And I just don't think we make enough of that.”
Lucy reflects that an emerging priority for institutions should be the wellbeing and mental heath of its students. Says Lucy, “I hesitate to call mental health a trend because it's not. But there are things that I've heard students talking about more in recent years than they did before. … there's a language and understanding around mental health and it's being articulated more and more clearly than it was before. And I think that's an example of how there's a much broader ecosystem around learning and student experience than I think our systems and spreadsheets and, and institutional org charts tell us”. We need to think about new ways of truly understanding and supporting students in this regard - and recognise this is intertwined with a student’s oveall experience.
In building on a research focus, Lucy also diagnoses that this research must be used and linked to an institution’s strategy. An institution’s strategy should use its research as an informing factor. Equally, if research is not informed by strategy, you can run the best research project ever with the most beautiful methodology and the most interesting findings, but if the two aren’t aligned “nobody will ever see the value in either.”
Ben Barnett, CEO Ziplet