STUDENT SURVEYS

Student surveys

Student surveys

Introduction

Taking a decision regarding any matter is a difficult task. The most important thing that provides support and guidance in reaching a decision is the availability of the plethora of information. This availability of information becomes possible to obtain when people have access to properly maintained websites and data resources. In order to address this issue the notion of designing website to aid students, and faculty in making independent decisions is in the implementation stage. For this website different results of the different surveys can be very helpful. These different surveys include, National Student Survey (NSS), Postgraduate Research Experience Survey (PRES), Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey (PTES), and Project Q. This paper reveals different facets and provides in-depth details about these surveys.

Postgraduate Research Experience Survey (PRES)

The Postgraduate Research Experience Survey (PRES) is a national survey managed by the Higher Education Academy (HEA). This education information provides a brief context for the survey summarizes how it can be used and comment on the nationally aggregated results of the 2009 postgraduate research experience survey (HEFCE, 2006).

Definition

PRES is a national on-line survey of postgraduate students undertaken annually by the Higher Education Academy. The survey is designed to provide participating institutions with feedback on what their postgraduates consider are important factors in determining their satisfaction with their educational experience their actual levels of satisfaction benchmarking against comparable institutions (UKCGE, 2005).

Benefits

PRES is designed to help institutions enhance the quality of postgraduate research degree provision by collecting feedback from current research students in a systematic and the user-friendly way i.e. online survey (Denicolo, 2008).

Analysis

PRES was run in 2007, 2008 and 2009. From 2009 PRES will be run every two years; the next PRES will be in 2011. In 2009 HEA developed the partner survey to PRES, the Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey, which will run in alternate years with PRES. Any HE institutions with postgraduate research students may elect to take part in PRES. Institutional results are only available to that institution. Institutions are unable to compare results with other autonomous institutions. Each participating institution has a designated PRES Officer, whose role it is to conduct the survey for that institution and communicate results to the HEA. PRES operates with a standard set of questions, which form the national aggregate results. Institutions may also add their own questions and free-text boxes are provided for student comments (NPC, 2004).

Steps taken for improvement in the process

The Graduate School runs a series of Supervisory Practice Up-dates and workshops for New Supervisors to ensure that super-visors are kept up to date with best practice and new approaches to supervising. The Graduate School's Researcher Development Program now includes more support for writing, publishing and presenting your research. Library and Learning Services developed a PGR focused information skills program with training such as planning a literature re-view and how to keep up to date with journal articles (NPC, 2004).

National Student Survey (NSS)

Definition

The national Student Survey is considered a national initiative. This survey is conducted on an annual ...