Closure Report

Project Summary

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 IS Application. 

The project was initiated utilising a student intern to produce a report with recommendations of how project managers within IS Applications can and should engage with students to ensure that project teams have access to effective and impactful student feedback that relates to their projects. In addition, the project aimed to produce a guidance document for project teams on the process of conducting student engagement.  

Scope

The planned 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.  The practices and opportunities for other teams at 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. 

Outcome

The project engaged with several different stakeholders at the University, using several different methods. Interviews and meetings were set up to gather in-depth insights into the frameworks that exist at the University, as well as understanding the current experience of student engagement among different project teams. Surveys were also used to gather a more general insight into project managers’ and students’ perception and experience with student engagement.  To examine examples of best practice external to the University the project engaged with case studies, higher education organisations and academic literature on the topic. This was done to acquire the in-depth understanding necessary to deliver feasible and insightful recommendations for future student engagement initiatives. 

The findings were summarised into a project report, which included reports and analysis of the current practices of student engagement within IS Applications and within the wider University community. The report outlines five recommendations for the short term, medium-term and long-term.  

In addition to the project report, a guidance document on how to conduct student engagement has been produced for project teams. It has been peer reviewed by several project managers and is ready to be circulated more widely.  

Objectives and Deliverables

Success criteria  

Key Learning Points

    Successes: 

• Meeting with the Students’ Association’s full-time staff and Sabbatical Officers was very valuable for the project. They have years of first-hand experience of engaging with students and provided the project with insightful input and advice.  

• Using a short survey to raise awareness about the project was a time-efficient way of getting in contact with project and programme managers who were willing to participate in interviews to provide the project with more in-depth information about their experience.  

• Reaching out and meeting with stakeholders beyond IS Applications was essential to obtain a clear understanding of the issues and opportunities of student engagement at the University of Edinburgh.  

    Major Issues: 

• Some departments were difficult to get in touch with, such as the Internal Communications team and some Schools at the University.  

• More student engagement could have been carried out on this project to gather a better understanding of the students’ experiences of participating in student engagement activities. However, due to the project being carried out over the summer break, the survey could only be circulated to the Employ.ed and ISG summer interns, leading to low (20) response rates for the student survey. This issue was mitigated through reading secondary research on the topic, and meeting with the Social and Political Science School’s intern who had carried out a similar survey and shared the results with the project.  

Analysis of Resource Usage:

Staff Usage Estimate: 30 days

Staff Usage Actual: 31 days

Explanation for variance

The variance in staff usage was due to the project manager’s other commitments and responsibilities, which were not anticipated in the planning of the project.