Speaker: Anish Bagga, CEO, Unitu. How can the authenticity and representativity of the student voice allow Universities to shape the student experience more effectively? Traditional mechanisms of collecting student feedback are limited. They provide a single snapshot of time, there is filtering and dilution of issues passing through the system and there is difficulty in closing the feedback loop. UCL, Swansea University, University of Greenwich and others now use Unitu, an online student voice platform. Unitu, a Jisc summer of student innovation project, enables students to post and comment about issues anonymously. Student reps to escalate the feedback to the appropriate staff in their department and Departmental staff are able to engage with the feedback in real time. As a result, changes can be made to the student experience faster and more reliably based upon the authentic student voice. This presentation explores two case studies from UCL and Swansea University, outlining their journey of implementing Unitu, the student and staff (positive and negative) experiences of using Unitu, what has and hasn’t worked and the impact it has had in shaping the student experience.

1. London – 11 June
Using a digital student
voice platform to improve
the student experience
Anish Bagga, Founder of Unitu

2. My Story
Why did I create a student voice platform?

3. 2014 Unitu were winners of SOSI and
funded £5k
2016 Unitu were Grant funded a further
12 months and mentioned in THE
2019 Unitu was Jisc Assessed

4. 4

6. Students as “Consumers” Students as “Producers”

7. THE STUDENT VOICE

8. Traditional methods do not provide an authentic
picture of the student voice in real time.

9. Student Rep
System
X
X
X

10. Hearing everyone in the feedback loop: using the new
discussion platform, Unitu, to enhance the staff and student
dialogue
Emma Mayhew, 2019

11. Emma Mayhew, 2019
“In sum, institutions face challenges surrounding facilitating,
hearing, actioning and maintaining ongoing, timely and
representative consultation as well as a responsive and transparent
dialogue.”

12. Student Voice Technology
What is it? & Can it solve the problem?

13. HearNow

14. Unitu helps institutions improve the
student experience by collecting and acting on
student feedback in real time.

15. Students can give feedback and
raise issues at any time.

16. Reps can provide representative and
unbiased feedback to staff.

17. Staff can instantly show students
how they’ve acted on their issues.

18. Identify trends and patterns around academic and non-
academic issues across the university.

19. Case Studies
The Benefits, Challenges and Impact

20. Started using Unitu in 2015 Started using Unitu in 2016
Centrally Governed Locally Governed
Started with 5,000 students
across 2 colleges
Started with 5,000 students,
across 2 faculties
Now 12,500 students across 5
colleges
Started with 900 students, in one
Department
Plan to scale across 4 Faculties
next year
Plan to scale across University
next year

21. Both applied a bottom up approach that enabled organic growth

22. http://tsep.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/3D-
Swansea-University-Case-Study.pptx
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/teaching-learning/case-
studies/2019/may/how-one-department-raised-its-nss-
student-voice-scores-14-just-over-year

23. Benefits experienced
• We get to resolve issues openly at a lower level
• Provides more immediate and local ownership of issues
• Creates a positive environment for change
• Supports the ethos of Student Partnership, directly connecting staff and
students
• Empowers the student body
• Successfully supported Colleges with enhancements and improvements

24. Authenticity of voice prompts action
Before: Now:
Issues
filtered
context
lost
Level of
passion is
conveyed
Original wording of
comments retained
Scale
unclear
Voting conveys
sense of scale of
issue
e.g. problems with student
residences

25. Transparency forces accountability and action
Before: Now:
Uncertain
destination
Unclear
ownership
of issues raised
Students can see
which staff have
viewed a post and
when
Updates are
communicated
immediately
Students can see
who is assigned to
resolve the issue
Unlikely to have
regular updates
Can’t easily go back
and ask for more
information
Pressure on staff
to act quickly

26. Anonymity challenges established power hierarchies
Before: Now:
Student-staff
relationship has
inherent power
imbalances
Anonymity (usually)
creates a safe space
for students to
express themselves
This can lead to a
sometimes hostile
space for staff

27. What were the challenges?
27
• Challenges in getting student participation with the platform
• Difficulties getting the tone right in our responses (sometimes we
inadvertently inflame an argument)
• Trolling by students against staff members
• Staff disagreement on what posts should be permitted
• Staff disagreement on who should respond
• Academic staff resistance (including outright refusal to engage)

28. Cited in: Mercer-Mapstone, L; Marquis, E; Mcconnell, C (2018) The ‘Partnership Identity’ in
Higher Education: Moving From ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ to ‘We’ in Student-Staff Partnership, SEHEJ,
2, 1.
Unitu as a brave space

29. What worked for them?
29
• Senior academic staff participating on Unitu
• Personal NOT corporate language
• Leaving posts up for weeks/ months to gather views and have a conversation
• Tolerant policy for appropriate topics
• Bravery

30. The impact they experienced
• Microwave and Hydroboil in Bay Library
• More double decker buses
• BASE Student Study Space (100+ places)
• Reusable cup discounts
• Better furniture in Library
• More PC Labs
• Smoking Policy Review
• Exam Invigilator Improvements
• Refocus from ‘Women in Engineering’
Changes made transparently through Unitu

31. The impact they experienced
31
“Our NSS scores on Student Voice were fantastic this year, I think Unitu has played a big part in that as
the change was biggest in our college where we use it most actively.”
Dr Patricia Xavier | College Student Engagement Lead
+5%
+9%
+14%
+5%

32. Benefits experienced
32
Support the student rep system
Dr Graham Roberts, who was Computer Science Departmental Tutor during the
pilot project, explains, '
We have Unitu set up so that all taught students (UG & PG) are registered at the
start of the academic year, and use it to run the student rep elections – this is a
really good feature and has worked very effectively for getting students involved
in the student rep process, giving a uniform and reliable way of running elections
that all students can straightforwardly participate in. Once elected the reps then
identify issues to flag up, and monitor/moderate the student-only discussion area.
We have found that the student area, which staff cannot access, has resulted in
much more student discussion about teaching, and provides a very effective way
for the student reps to keep in touch with the student body.'

33. Benefits experienced
33
Improve response times
“Previously student feedback was generally received via email and responses
sent back to students individually. With Unitu, staff are able post replies and
solutions back for the whole student community. Students are alerted to new
responses automatically by the system (they can adjust the frequency to suit their
preference) making it easy to keep everyone informed of progress on important
issues. This means staff are much more responsive to feedback and deal with
issues before they worsen as often happens if they aren’t flagged until the next
Staff Student Consultative Committee meeting.”

34. Benefits experienced
34
Inform SSCC meetings
“One of the Programme Administrators at UCL Engineering mentioned they are
using Unitu to prepare for SSCC meetings by engaging students, and resolving
some of issues even before the meeting itself; they then append Unitu logs to
SSCC minutes.”

35. Benefits experienced
35
Improve transparency
During the course of the pilot Graham Roberts identified other advantages:
'Another important benefit is that once an issue is raised all students can see the
responses and how an issue has been resolved, making things a lot more
transparent.'
Collecting feedback transparently across the whole student community also saves
effort for Student Reps who would otherwise have to find other ways to poll and
gather feedback from their peers. The platform has helped empower Student
Reps,to reach out and engage their respective student cohorts more effectively.

36. Challenges they experienced
36
Building staff capacity
“Staff had to invest time in learning to use the system to benefit from its ease of
use and time saving features. This required regular support sessions and
demonstrations. The Unitu team organised webinars, demos and other training
sessions, which greatly helped UCL staff and students using the platform
effectively.”

37. Challenges they experienced
37
Building student engagement with the system
“For Unitu to work, enough students need to sign up to the system to make it
representative. This means that we had to do quite a lot of engagement – through
Student Reps but also directly to students through teaching teams. We found that
by promoting and incorporating it into induction processes right at the start of
session, more students were encouraged to sign up.”

38. Challenges they experienced
38
Making clear the scope of the system
“Unitu aids to track issues that relate to the programme/student experience as a
whole. Requests for teaching materials for a particular module, or personal
queries should still be resolved with the relevant lecturer or personal tutor ideally
by posting via the module's Moodle discussion forum.”

39. Challenges they experienced
39
Culture shift
“Unitu is effective only where there is already an established culture of student
engagement – if a department is already listening to students and maintaining an
ongoing dialogue then the platform supports those processes by enabling
transparency, fast responses and status updates.”

40. The impact they experienced
Dr Graham Roberts, who was the Computer Science Departmental Tutor during
the pilot project, says: “Thanks to this platform, last year we were able to respond
to students’ issues usually within 48 hours. We believe this intervention has led our
Student Voice NSS scores to increase by 14% in 2018 compared to the year
before”.
NSS Student Voice Improvements

41. The impact they experienced
“Unitu gives us the ability to see patterns of feedback that appear not only across
departments and faculties, but across the institution as a whole. This insight could
be used to inform broader policy and operational approaches, identify solutions
that are of genuine relevance to students and focus on the enhancements that
deliver the most impact to the student experience.”
Chris Neil, Head of UCL Engineering’s Digital Innovation Unit (DIU)
Identifying trends that inform policy

42. The impact they experienced
Chris posted a question on Unitu to students:
'Do you think we should continue using Unitu?' Within hours, the results came
back from the student community. Of the comments received, responses included:
'Yes 100% [we] should carry on using it.'
'It has definitely improved the communication gap between students and staff.'
'I feel like out of all the efforts to improve communication between students and
staff, this has so far been the most effective.'
'It provides a transparent and visible complaint and feedback mechanism for
students.'
'It has really helped make feedback more transparent.'
'More action has been taken as result of students voicing issues and resolutions
have been reached faster.'
What did students think?

43. Your strategy determines the success of the technology
Key components to consider when investing in student voice tech

44. What to consider when implementing the tech?
• Clarify your goals and align it with an already existing student engagement strategy
• Clarify your stakeholders and get buy-in from the start
• Pilot with departments that have an inherent student-staff partnership culture
• Create an engagement strategy for the entire academic year
• Students (Awareness and support)
• Student Reps (Training and accountability)
• Departmental Staff (Appropriate staff, an agreed time to respond and way to respond)
• Create a community guidelines for all stakeholders
• Ensure there is a moderation process
• Hold regular trainings
• Hold regular management and reporting meetings to assess the tech on an ongoing basis
• Celebrate and share success internally to enable organic growth (reassure the skeptics)

45. Thank you.
Anish Bagga
anish@unitu.co.uk
@baggaanish