The landscape of higher education (HE) has dramatically altered in the past 30 years and it continues to evolve and change. More students are entering HE and attending university or college on a global scale than ever before. Supporting and enhancing the undergraduate student experience across the student lifecycle, from first contact through to alumni, is a critical activity in higher education today not only to aid retention and progression but in a highly competitive HE market, the quality of the student experience is pivotal to an institution’s ability to attract students. The student experience encompasses all aspects of student life, i.e. academic, social, welfare, with the academic imperative at the heart of it. However, the increasing costs of delivering HE, a reduction in government/ state funding and constraints on resources means delivering a quality student experience has never been more challenging for those working in HE. Staff at all levels, and across all areas within an institution, are developing and implementing initiatives to improve and enhance the student experience whether they are at the coal face or on the periphery thus making them a ‘Practitioner’ in the student experience. This could include the admissions administrator improving the information available for potential applicants; the academic improving his/her feedback to students or central welfare departments ensuring that their services are being advertised and supported within a student’s home unit (faculty/department/school/course). In this book, the Editor, Michelle Morgan describes how her new student experience ‘Practitioner Model’ provides an organised and more detailed structure; guiding Practitioners in the identification of what they have to deliver, who they need to deliver it to and when they need to deliver it across her six key stages of the student lifecycle: · First Contact and Admissions; · Pre-arrival; · Arrival and Orientation; · Induction to Study; · Reorientation and Reinduction (Returners' Induction) · Outduction (preparation for life after undergraduate study). The Practioner Model offers a new way of thinking in terms of delivering ‘interlinked’ academic, welfare and support activities at the home unit and university level to support the student in their university journey. This book also provides working solutions to real problems in the form of exemplar case studies from the UK and internationally, including chapters from Liz Thomas, Di Nutt, Marcia Ody, Chris Keenan(UK), Mary Stuart Hunter, (USA), Kerri-Lee Krause and Duncan Nulty (Australia). Good practice must be adaptable and transferable because one size does not fit all. It must also be cost effective. And here the authors shows how practitioners can adapt and customise the 40 case studies presented to help them not only improve and enhance the experience of their undergraduate students in their own institution (both full and part-time) but also to support their students’ progression and retention.

Measuring and Enhancing the Student Experience provides insights on how student experience measures could be used to inform improvements at institutional, course, unit of study and teacher level. The book is based on a decade of research and practitioner views on ways to enhance the design, conduct, analysis, reporting and closing the loop on student feedback data. While the book is largely based on Australian case studies, it provides learning experiences for other countries where student experience measures are used in national and institutional quality assurance. Consisting of 13 chapters, the book includes a wide range of topics including the role and purpose of student feedback, the use of student feedback in staff performance reviews, staff and student engagement, a student feedback and experience framework, the first year experience, use of qualitative data, engaging transnational students in feedback, closing the loop on feedback, student engagement in national quality assurance, use of learning analytics and the future of the student experience. Mahsood Shah is an Associate Professor and Deputy Dean (Learning and Teaching) with School of Business and Law at CQUniversity, Australia. In this role Mahsood is responsible for enhancing the academic quality and standard of courses. Mahsood is also responsible for learning and teaching strategy, governance, effective implementation of policies, and enhancement of learning and teaching outcomes across all campuses. In providing leadership for learning and teaching, Mahsood works with key academic leaders across all campuses to improve learning and teaching outcomes of courses delivered in various modes including face-to-face and online. At CQUniversity, he provides leadership in national and international accreditation of academic courses. Mahsood is also an active researcher. His areas of research include quality in higher education, measurement and enhancement of student experience, student retention and attrition, student engagement in quality assurance, international higher education, widening participation and private higher education. Chenicheri Sid Nair is the incoming Executive Director, Tertiary Education Commission (TEC), Mauritius. Prior to joining TEC, he was Professor, Higher Education Development at the University of Western Australia (UWA), Perth where his work encompassed the improvement of the institutions teaching and learning. Before this appointment to UWA, he was Quality Adviser (Research and Evaluation) in the Centre for Higher Education Quality (CHEQ) at Monash University, Australia. He has an extensive expertise in the area of quality development and evaluation, and he also has considerable editorial experience. Currently, he is Associate Editor of the International Journal of Quality Assurance in Engineering and Technology Education (IJQAETE). He was also a Managing Editor of the Electronic Journal of Science Education (EJSE). Professor Nair is also an international consultant in a number of countries in quality, student voice and evaluations. Provides both practical experience and research findings Presents a diverse range of topics, ranging from broader student experience issues, analysis of government policies in Australia on student experience, the changing context of student evaluations, nonresponse to surveys, staff and student engagement, ideal frameworks for student feedback, and more Contains data taken from the unique Australian experience with changing government policies and reforms relevant to the Asia-Pacific region

What's it really like to learn online?Learning Online: The Student Experience Online learning is ubiquitous for millions of students worldwide, yet our understanding of student experiences in online learning settings is limited. The geographic distance that separates faculty from students in an online environment is its signature feature, but it is also one that risks widening the gulf between teachers and learners. In Learning Online, George Veletsianos argues that in order to critique, understand, and improve online learning, we must examine it through the lens of student experience. Approaching the topic with stories that elicit empathy, compassion, and care, Veletsianos relays the diverse day-to-day experiences of online learners. Each in-depth chapter follows a single learner's experience while focusing on an important or noteworthy aspect of online learning, tackling everything from demographics, attrition, motivation, and loneliness to cheating, openness, flexibility, social media, and digital divides. Veletsianos also draws on these case studies to offer recommendations for the future and lessons learned. The elusive nature of online learners' experiences, the book reveals, is a problem because it prevents us from doing better: from designing more effective online courses, from making evidence-informed decisions about online education, and from coming to our work with the full sense of empathy that our students deserve. Writing in an evocative, accessible, and concise manner, Veletsianos concretely demonstrates why it is so important to pay closer attention to the stories of students—who may have instructive and insightful ideas about the future of education.

Co-published with More first-generation students are attending college than ever before, and policy makers agree that increasing their participation in higher education is a matter of priority. Despite this, there is no agreed definition about the term, few institutions can quantify how many first-generation students are enrolled, or mistakenly conflate them with low-income students, and many important dimensions to the first-generation student experience remain poorly documented. Few institutions have in place a clear, well-articulated practice for assisting first-generation students to succeed. Given that first-generation students comprise over 40% of incoming freshmen, increasing their retention and graduation rates can dramatically increase an institution’s overall retention and graduation rates, and enhance its image and desirability. It is clearly in every institution’s self-interest to ensure its first-generation students succeed, to identify and count them, and understand how to support them. This book provides high-level administrators with a plan of action for deans to create the awareness necessary for meaningful long-term change, sets out a campus acclimation process, and provides guidelines for the necessary support structures.At the heart of the book are 14 first-person narratives – by first-generation students spanning freshman to graduate years – that help the reader get to grips with the variety of ethnic and economic categories to which they belong. The book concludes by defining 14 key issues that institutions need to address, and offers a course of action for addressing them. This book is intended for everyone who serves these students – faculty, academic advisors, counselors, student affairs professionals, admissions officers, and administrators – and offers a set of best practices for how two- and four-year institutions can improve the success of their first-generation student populations.An ACPA Publication

The book makes an important contribution to the discourse on student experience in higher education. The book includes chapters that cover important aspects of the 21st century student experience. Chapters cover issues such as: new trends and insights on the student experience; the changing profile of students in higher education and performance measures used to assess the quality of student experience, institutional approaches in engaging students, using student voice to improve the quality of teaching, COVID-19 and its impact on international students, innovative partnerships between students and academic staff, student feedback and raising academic standards, the increased use of qualitative data in gaining insights into student experience, the use of innovative learning spaces and technology to enhance the learning experience, and the potentially disrupting nature of student feedback and its impact on the health and wellbeing of academic staff, and the increased use of social media reviews by students.

An examination of the first year of college and the intersecting challenges facing today's students, written by top educational researchers.

In the United States, 1,200 community colleges enroll over ten million students each year—nearly half of the nation’s undergraduates. Yet fewer than 40 percent of entrants complete an undergraduate degree within six years. This fact has put pressure on community colleges to improve academic outcomes for their students. Redesigning America’s Community Colleges is a concise, evidence-based guide for educational leaders whose institutions typically receive short shrift in academic and policy discussions. It makes a compelling case that two-year colleges can substantially increase their rates of student success, if they are willing to rethink the ways in which they organize programs of study, support services, and instruction. Community colleges were originally designed to expand college enrollments at low cost, not to maximize completion of high-quality programs of study. The result was a cafeteria-style model in which students pick courses from a bewildering array of choices, with little guidance. The authors urge administrators and faculty to reject this traditional model in favor of “guided pathways”—clearer, more educationally coherent programs of study that simplify students’ choices without limiting their options and that enable them to complete credentials and advance to further education and the labor market more quickly and at less cost. Distilling a wealth of data amassed from the Community College Research Center (Teachers College, Columbia University), Redesigning America’s Community Colleges offers a fundamental redesign of the way two-year colleges operate, stressing the integration of services and instruction into more clearly structured programs of study that support every student’s goals.