The Cover
The fundamentals
Is there a recipe for a successful and fulfilling university experience?
Everyone's experience of university is different, and countless factors can affect it. But there are some fundamental factors that will shape it for everyone – and access to those is crucial, Claudia Civinini reports.
The fox in Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's 1943 novella, The Little Prince, taught generations of children that the essential is invisible to the eyes. In the case of the student experience, the essential can also be hard to recognise. According to research by Neal Christopherson, Director of Institutional Research at Whitman College in the US, seven vital factors shape undergraduate life.
His research followed a sizeable group of students during their time at the college to find out what mattered to them. The project started with 75 students, and over 60 of them were involved throughout the whole research, which spanned five years. The results, he explains, reinforce the importance of community relationships, and the way the campus environment can influence student learning and student development.
Christopherson is quick to warn that the findings may not apply everywhere:
Whitman College is a small, residential liberal arts college in West Coast state of Washington. "I think the kind of school we are is in some way unique to the United States," he says. The underlying themes of belonging, safety, inclusion, engagement and relationships, just to name a few, however, are fundamental to students everywhere.
Peter Miskell, ProVice-Chancellor Education and Student Experience at the University of Reading in the UK, a very different context from Whitman College, says that although there is a myriad of factors, three broad elements are critical: a safe and inclusive environment, the quality of teaching, and plenty of opportunities for personal and professional development embedded throughout the whole experience to prepare students for life after graduation. However, for these fundamentals of university experience to fully make a difference, breaking down barriers is vital.
When asked what 'the fundamentals' are, Mary McHarg, Activities and Engagement Officer at the UCL Students' Union in London, quickly names the quality of teaching and the opportunity to form relationships, the latter being something that, she says, is often overlooked.
However, she adds: "Those are the big things that shape students' life at university. But there are also enabling factors that allow them to access both of those things. For example, with the cost of living crisis, the main question that is affecting students right now is whether you can afford to even be a student."
Barriers to student participation and belonging can be invisible, vary across student demographics and emerge with time, but there are some issues that are front of mind when designing a student experience that allows all students to access those fundamental ingredients..
"The main question that is affecting students right now is whether you can afford to even be a student."
Peter Miskell, ProVice-Chancellor Education and Student Experience at the University of Reading in the UK, a very different context from Whitman College, says that although there is a myriad of factors, three broad elements are critical: a safe and inclusive environment, the quality of teaching, and plenty of opportunities for personal and professional development embedded throughout the whole experience to prepare students for life after graduation. However, for these fundamentals of university experience to fully make a difference, breaking down barriers is vital.
When asked what 'the fundamentals' are, Mary McHarg, Activities and Engagement Officer at the UCL Students' Union in London, quickly names the quality of teaching and the opportunity to form relationships, the latter being something that, she says, is often overlooked.
However, she adds: "Those are the big things that shape students' life at university. But there are also enabling factors that allow them to access both of those things. For example, with the cost of living crisis, the main question that is affecting students right now is whether you can afford to even be a student."
Barriers to student participation and belonging can be invisible, vary across student demographics and emerge with time, but there are some issues that are front of mind when designing a student experience that allows all students to access those fundamental ingredients.
Taking risks
An inclusive, safe and supportive environment is clearly the basis for any successful student experience. Anyone working in education will know this is not a platitude, and that it's a lot more complex than it sounds. Also, it definitely doesn't mean pampering students. "It's not about wrapping students in cotton wool and making sure that they don't have challenges, but it's about providing an environment where they are comfortable and confident enough to actually challenge themselves,” says Miskell.
"Behind that, of course, there's an awful lot. It's everything from accommodation, campus environment, academic support… there is a whole range of things. But I think pulling that all together, there is something there about creating an inclusive and supportive community that students feel part of."
This type of environment also supports two of the fundamental factors that Christopherson's research found: students' interactions and access to leadership opportunities. The relationships that students form in and out of the classroom underpin learning, according to the research. "It's important to enable students to share ideas with each other and support each other academically," he explains.
"When students leave class, they can keep talking to each other about it. And if there's an environment that supports them to continue to interact with each other, help each other with essays that they're writing, studying together, building each other up and supporting each other as they go through this thing together – it helps them learn more as well."
It's also crucial to give students plenty of chances to try and be in charge of something, he explains: "this helps them grow and develop as people outside of classroom spaces.
"Maybe they've never done that before and now they can learn how to do that and how to be effective in that role – or how to not be effective!"
"It's not about wrapping students in cotton wool."
Starting right
A sense of belonging can start in the classroom, and that's where universities can make a difference to the experience of most students. “If universities want to enhance students' belonging, engagement and wellbeing, they have to think about where most or all students are, which is in the curriculum,” says Professor Chi Baik, Deputy Director of the Melbourne Centre for the Study of Higher Education and a professor in higher education at the University of Melbourne in Australia.
Research she and colleagues have been conducting has so far found belonging for students is related to academic belonging. "[This means] I'm in the right course for me, I know where this is leading. I feel a sense of connection to what I'm learning," she says. "Often when people talk about belonging, they think of institutional affiliation, and through clubs and societies. All of that is important. But I think at the core of student experience is their experience of their courses and the broad curriculum."
One of the most critical actions for universities, she says, is focusing on the experience of first-year students. "There should be a lot more attention to helping students build connections, not just with other students, but also connections with the staff, and connections with their curriculum." Professor Baik explains that this needs to be fostered through meaningful tasks related to their studies and interests, not protracted 'getting to know you' activities which may not be everyone's cup of tea. "Students are time-poor. They want to come to university and feel like their time is valued.”
Fostering belonging through meaningful educational activities is key, in her view. "We want to see early collaborative learning with an educational purpose; a meaningful, educational purpose. And while doing that, students will get to know their peers and they'll be working towards a common goal."
"It's about students being able to explore and engage and learn for learning's sake."
She is also pushing for a radical rethink of assessment for first-year students and to create an environment where students are free to take risks and experiment. "I am a big advocate of the pass or fail, or ungraded assessment, in the first year," Professor Baik says. "It can help achieve some of those aims around connection, and it supports students' wellbeing. But more importantly, it's about students being able to explore and engage and learn for learning's sake and not be fixated on grades and marks, which sometimes can be undermining of their broader motivation and their engagement at university."
She quickly emphasises that a pass doesn't mean a score of 50 per cent, but the achievement of specific standards that students need to progress to the second year, a view she acknowledges can be controversial view.
"I think that students will be motivated, with a different kind of motivation: not an extrinsic or an instrumental motivation, but they'll be much more intrinsically motivated to try different things and different subjects that they might be interested in, without worrying about 'I might not be good at this, so this might bring down my grade point average'.
Finding fellow nerds
For some, the experiences outside of the classroom are what make a difference. McHarg was at the end of the first year of an Arts and Science degree at UCL when COVID hit. Help getting through that difficult time came from her experience as the president of the Sci-Fi and Fantasy society.
"As a queer young person who is also a massive nerd, finding a community of diverse and inclusive fellow nerds was one of the reasons why I got through most of my second year," she recounts. "I had a really bad experience at the end of my first year and my second year because of COVID and mental health reasons. My whole university experience was absolutely thrown in the air. And if it wasn't for the student society, I don't think I would've made it through my degree."
Belonging is fundamental to a student's university experience. "If you don't feel a sense of belonging, you'll probably drop out of university," McHarg says.
Having thriving communities on campus is also a fundamental ingredient of student engagement, fostering collaboration between student communities, the students' union and the university, she adds.
Among the many barriers to access, participation and belonging at all levels of the student experience, some of the most urgent are financial. Applications for the UCL Students' Union's support funds for students with financial difficulties have recently increased, and the union hired two more financial advisors to deal with the influx of students applying for their funds. "It's been a really stark increase, and it's very disheartening to see it happen on the frontline," remarks McHarg.
"We did a recent cost of living crisis survey with some other Students’ Union. And one of the things that hit me hardest was that over half of the people who did the survey said that they had stopped their extracurriculars because they either couldn't afford it, or they couldn't afford the free time to take part."
"A lot of it is figuring out how to enable dialogue to understand what the barriers are."
Breaking barriers
Another barrier to participation is having to work, especially for certain demographics. The key, McHarg says, is to offer as many different opportunities for students that are accessible and low commitment, and affordable or free. The Students’ Union recently started working with UCL staff to develop a student life strategy that encompasses co-curricular and extracurricular activities. The extra funding is hoped to remove barriers to entry to activities from the arts to volunteering.
Funding is only one barrier to joining extracurricular activities. Another is flexibility and skill. "Currently, in order to take part in many of our art societies, whether it's musical theatre or drama or live music, you need to already have lots of those skills developed… it's not as friendly to students who want to break into those kinds of activities or maybe move into the arts sector," she explains.
Barriers to belonging will also vary according to the context of the institution, and it's important to consider how structural barriers impact specific groups of students. A recent study found students of colour and those from working-class backgrounds feel they don't belong at elite institutions. A lack of diversity and representation across race, socio-economic status and gender in some fields negatively impact students' sense of belonging. This is where initiatives to decolonise the curriculum, for example, can begin to remove some barriers to belonging and connection.
Acknowledging one's potential bias, enabling dialogue, and reaching out to specific groups of students to ensure their voices are heard are also key actions. Christopherson’s research highlighted giving attention to financial and structural barriers to participation as a fundamental element of a successful student experience. But challenges are not always visible to everyone.
"A lot of it is figuring out how to enable dialogue to understand what the barriers are, because a lot of them are invisible to someone like me, for example. As a white man on a campus that has racial diversity, I don't necessarily see the barriers that someone else might see.
"But other people know what the barriers are, and they'll tell you, and the point is for people in my position to not get defensive about it and instead say 'okay, I can see what you're saying, and let's see what we can do to make that better'."
Listen to your students
Is there a mismatch between what universities offer and what students want and need, sometimes?
It's a question of priorities, and sometimes, they don't match. McHarg says: "Universities have short-term projects they're working on, but more often than not, they have very, very long-term projects that are years and years, sometimes decades in the making. Students don't have priorities that are decades long.
"I think the key for universities, in order to better align with student priorities and better help students access the education that they deserve, they need to have a clear idea of what students want and what they need to be successful."
To engage students, Miskell explains having a variety of methods and offering students a variety of channels to have their say is key to ensuring that meaningful feedback representing the breadth of student voice is captured. With multiple channels, including staff-student committees and surveys, findings can be cross-referenced and explored.
"You have to be careful about triangulating these things. More often than not, findings do match up," he explains. "If you get groups of students saying, 'we're really not happy about this particular module', then you will normally also see that coming through pretty clearly in the module feedback.”
However, a crucial component of the process is a system to feed back to students and show how their voice has an impact.
"With any form of student engagement, what's really important is that we have a mechanism not just for listening to what students are telling us but also a mechanism for feeding back to students, so that we are demonstrating that we're taking that seriously," Miskell says.
As in traditional student-staff committees, students were at the centre of Christopherson's research, not just as interviewees, but also as interviewers. “We thought students would tell other students things they wouldn't tell a staff member," he says. The research was published in 2020 as a book titled Transformative Experiences in College: Connections and Community.
"With any form of student engagement, what's really important is... a mechanism for feeding back to students."
Even before the book’s publication, the findings were shared and used in the institution. He explains: "Throughout the whole process of doing the research, I had been giving updates and reports on specific aspects of what we were finding. And I think that trickled into the way we are thinking about things." For example, the findings informed a decision regarding the residence halls system, after students reported finding it difficult to maintain social circles after moving out of the large communal halls reserved for first-year students.
While a longitudinal study like his is certainly a worthwhile endeavour, Christopherson acknowledges that not every university may be able to do it. But a smaller version can be considered. Using different interview techniques and asking the right questions, he says, is paramount. "For example, we asked students: tell me about the classes you took; which ones were the best and which were the most effective? But then the important thing is to ask the how and the why questions," he explains.
"Why do you identify that as the most effective class you took? How did you learn that much in that class?"
"If it wasn't for the student society, I don't think I would've made it through my degree."
New priorities
While relationships and belonging will remain the bedrock of the student experience, other factors may change or emerge.
One new priority for students all over the world is sustainable education. The UCL Students' Union runs the Student Choice Awards every year to recognise outstanding staff based on a set of categories and feedback from students. The categories are developed through workshops where students are asked what they value in their teachers and are a roadmap of what students want and need in their university education. The new sustainable education category was added in 2022. This category "recognises staff who are leading the way in embedding sustainability into the curriculum and shaping our future climate leaders."
Another fundamental factor shaping the student experience is mental health support, especially in the wake of the pandemic. Miskell acknowledges that while the number of students reporting mental health problems is growing each year, the resources that universities have at their disposal aren't.
"We would want to be able to devote students one to one resource and dedicated support. And that's possible if you have 1% of your student population in that category. If it's 20 percent or 30 percent, then there's just no way you can provide the same level of dedicated resource."
Inclusion and access may be again the key to solving the issue.
"We're trying to get to a situation where instead of identifying students with particular problems and then providing some kind of bespoke solution, we're thinking about how we can design support systems and programmes – for example, our study support and our assessments – in such a way that they're more accessible to everybody," he explains.
"So, rather than having to develop additional support systems for specific students, we can develop a more generic support system that is in itself more inclusive so that more people are able to access it."