Project Brief

Background

The IS Applications team carries out a vast number of projects to enhance and develop new services and programmes for students. Student input on current services and the development of new ones is thus highly valuable and would ensure that the projects are carried out with the students’ needs and experience in mind. However, at the moment there is limited guidance and information for project managers about how to effectively engage with students, which act as a barrier to student engagement, and thus student experience improvement, within Project Services.

Student engagement refers to “meaningful participation of students in quality assurance and enhancement processes”. This can take the form of gathering student opinions on support services at university, working in partnerships with students to develop new services and programmes, or involving students in reviews and enhancement procedures of current services and programmes.

There is widespread recognition that effective student engagement is vital to the efforts of enhancing the student experience, both within the University, as highlighted by the University’s Student Voice Policy, and in other universities, institutions and academic communities. Across the UK, new programmes and innovations to promote effective student engagement have been initiated and several institutions have been set up to facilitate change and improvements in the area.

It is evident that enhancement of the student experience should be a priority and be considered in all projects concerning student support services, and that to reach this goal the University needs to ensure that effective channels for student engagement are available to staff. 

The desired outcome of this project is to produce a report with recommendations of how project managers within Project Services can and should engage with students to ensure that project managers have access to effective and impactful student feedback that relates to their projects. The project will engage with stakeholders at the University to uncover the rules and regulations surrounding communication and engagement with students, as well as issues and opportunities for current and future student engagement. The project will further engage with case studies, higher education organisations and academic literature on the topic to acquire an in-depth understanding of the topic of student engagement in order to be able to deliver feasible and insightful recommendations for future student engagement initiatives.

Scope

The scope of this project includes analysing current practices of student engagement within IS Applications and explore and make recommendations of opportunities of effective student engagement that can be initiated within Project Services.

Not in scope

The practices and opportunities for other teams within ISG or the University will be explored, however the recommendations will focus on being applicable for the Project Services team only. Out of scope also includes any implementation of the recommendations made in the report.

Objectives & Deliverables 

Benefits

This project will mainly ensure that project managers have easily accessible information on how to effectively engage with students, including both the channels available as well as examples of best practice. The project will thus have an interim benefit, as well as potential long-term benefits if the interim benefit is realised.

The interim benefit is a better understanding among project managers of how to effectively engage with students and how to access information and guidance if they want to engage with students on a project. This will be made measurable by sending out a survey to project managers at the start of the project, asking them if they are aware of the process of engaging with students and how likely they are to do so. The survey can then be sent out to project managers after the closure of the project and the publication of the guidance document, to measure whether the project achieved the goal of a better understanding of student engagement.

The long-term benefits of this project would be an increase in the uptake of student engagement on projects. The clear guidance and recommendations of effective student engagement should also increase the likeliness that student engagement is conducted in an effective way that provides valuable insight into students’ needs and experience. This in turn would increase the potential of IS Applications’ to carry out projects that improve the student experience at the University of Edinburgh.

Success Criteria

• Production of a final report on the topic of student engagement within IS Applications, including recommendations on how staff can engage effectively with students, as well as recommendations of initiatives that can be further researched and introduced to improve student engagement within IS Applications.
• Production of a guidance document that will be accessible to staff wishing to engage with student on their projects. The guidance document will include information of which channels are available, what the process of using those channels is as well as information about how to engage with students in the most effective way.

Project Milestones

Document Sign Off