How do Africa’s 700 universities assess student feedback, whether positive or negative?
Given the increasing financial dependency of universities on student fees, particularly from international students, it seems like a good question to ask.
Last year saw the publication of the first South African Survey of Student Engagement (SASSE), which could well be emulated by other higher education institutions.
The pilot study began in 2009 by surveying over 13,600 undergraduate students at seven South African universities in both rural and urban regions.
The survey was done among students at a wide range of universities, including Fort Hare, Wits (the University of the Witwatersrand), the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, Tshwane University of Technology, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University and the University of Johannesburg.
The authors, François Strydom and Melody Mentz, are from the Division of Student Development and Success at South Africa’s University of the Free State, which was also surveyed.
The South African report measured the level of academic challenge, the degree of active and collaborative learning, interaction between students and staff, the provision of enriching educational experiences and the extent to which the campus environment was supportive.
The report is available for free on the website of South Africa’s Council for Higher Education (CHE), which has been directed since last year by Ahmed Essop.
The report was commissioned by Judy Backhouse, the CHE director of advice and monitoring, who said in the introduction to the report that the survey would help them recommend a four-year-long curriculum to combat the high failure rate.
Their report says the data can be very practical and ‘‘help identify those conditions and drivers of success over which institutions have control.’’ Each of the seven participating universities received an institutional report and access to their institutional data file.
Such information ‘‘can be used to improve the positive outcomes of higher education, such as improved throughput and success rates,’’ the report noted.
A student survey is also useful ‘‘in improving the quality of teaching and learning by providing institutions with an additional source of data for quality assurance processes,’’ they noted.
The researchers broke down the concept of student engagement into two components: what students do (the time and energy that they devote to educational activities), and what institutions do (the extent to which they employ effective educational practices to induce students to do the right things.)
Among their findings: only one in four students studied more than 20 hours per week, despite the longstanding convention is that students should spend at least two hours studying and preparing for every hour in class.
Close to six out of every ten first-year university students had never made a presentation in any of their classes, although this improves by their senior years.
Only 38 percent of the South African university students described their relationships with administrative staff as positive.
Following on the success of the pilot survey, the 2010 sample remains at seven institutions, of which four are first-time participants.
‘‘Several institutions who participated in 2009 indicated that they first want to use the data to effect institutional change before participating in the SASSE again,’’ said the authors, who say many universities participate every three years in order to improve.
The 2010 project, which is currently being put together, include an online version of the SASSE, as well as an online pilot of the Lecturer Survey of Student Engagement (LSSE) to provide institutions with the ability to compare student and staff perspectives on student engagement in the same year.
The South African university student survey was based on the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) used by over 1,300 colleges and universities in the USA and Canada.
The NSSE has also been adapted and used in 35 universities in Australia and New Zealand and is being piloted in 23 Chinese higher education institutions.
The NSSE survey was developed partly as a reaction to university ranking systems in the USA.
These rankings, in the view of many higher education leaders, focus on the wrong criteria such as selectivity and staff credentials. The NSSE refocusing the discussion of quality in higher education on students and their learning.
Does your university monitor student happiness? Email us at cs@research-africa.net.