Ask me if I am Engaged: A Design-led Approach to Collect Student Feedback on their University Experience

Abstract

Despite being an established practice in Higher Education (HE), the collection of feedback from students, to improve their university experience, has yet to find a unified format. Literature shows that, besides enabling collection of data on aspects of the university journey, feedback collection should also be an engaging experience for students and translate into a learning opportunity. To facilitate students’ engagement and enhance their role as shapers of their HE experience, we propose an innovative method for the collection of student feedback that leverages the potential of Design Thinking. Our method was tested in two design-led workshops for 59 Master students in a Business School in the UK. The workshops, a blend of content delivery, and individual and team activities, were framed around designing the university of the future. Introduced and concluded by two purpose-built surveys, the workshops were organised in problem-framing; ideas generation; and prototyping. Enthusiastically welcomed by participants as a unique way to co-design their HE journey, the workshops achieved the triple objective of collecting rich data on student feedback; increasing engagement in participants; and delivering notions about design thinking. In this paper, we report on the workshops and
share details for our method to be replicated.