Evaluation of Student Services

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Evaluation of Student Services
Student Services

• Review of monitoring and evaluation
• at UWE.
• Theresa McGoldrick
• Director of Student Services
• Theresa.mcgoldrick_at_uwe.ac.uk

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Outline of Session
Student Services

• Background and context
• Definitions
• Our range of monitoring evaluation tools
• SSD issues and developments in ME
• Internal challenges
• Activity
• Discussion

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Context of UWE
Student Services

• Former Bristol Poly
• Recruits not selects
• WP mission
• Stability and continuity followed by rapid
  change 2005 onwards
• Internal review 2005-2007 restructure
• Strategic vision focused on Student Journey

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Student Services
Student Services

• 3 Teams
• Student Support
• Student Health Wellbeing
• Employability Life Skills
• Plus Faculty Student Advisory Service 48 people
• Developing new Student Centre
• 70 fte core staff 130 sessional staff, ranges
  from Professional to support and admin

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External Standards
Student Services

• Matrix
• Institute of Volunteering research
• Community Legal Services
• REAP Self Assessment Measurement
• HEFCE eg ALF Guidelines

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Definitions
Student Services

• Monitoring Evaluation
• 2 different but closely related management tools
• Should be interactive and mutually supportive

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Monitoring
Student Services

• Periodic and regular keeping track and
  oversight
• Track participation profiles, eg by age, gender,
  ethnicity, social class, etc.
• Measures inputs, outputs, process outcomes, work
  plans

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Evaluation
Student Services

• Focus on quality and value of work
• Impact, effectiveness, sustainability
• Future planning
• Usually costs more in time and money than
  monitoring

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Discussion Activity
Student Services

• How well do we understand the differences in
  process and purpose?
• Activity

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M E tools
Student Services

• Survey Monkey
• Questionnaires
• Focus Groups Student Voices
• Numerical counts
• Case Review meetings
• Independent File Reviews

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more M E tools
Student Services

• Peer Review
• Observation, eg Reception Staff
• 10 check of email responses
• Department KPIs
• ISIS statistics
• National Student Survey
• Complaints procedure
• Academic Appeals Procedure

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Uses of M E tools
Student Services

• Monitor level and type of demand to plan workload
  spread
• Turnaround times
• Eligibility for service provision
• Ensure legality, accuracy and accessibility of
  services

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How effectively are tools used at UWE?
Student Services

• Using an imaginary 5-Star Rating,
• best of SSD is probably about 3.5 stars
• other services would be
• struggling to justify 1-star
• (one would barely raise a twinkle)
• A very mixed bag!

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Challenges
Student Services

• Evaluation of
• demand-led services can be overtaken by meeting
  demand
• Specialist 1-1 services
• In-depth interactions v quick queries

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Development at UWE
Student Services

• Student Services ME Review Group
• Review leader Assistant Director SSD
• Participants Heads of all sections and teams
• Purpose to establish what we need to monitor and
  evaluate,
• why, what impact will it make on students and
  others, who are the others, etc?
• Agree working definition of alignment

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Discussion
Student Services

• How can we improve the effectiveness of our use
  of our existing toolkit?
• Are these the right priorities for our monitoring
  and evaluation?
• Are there other models, methods resources we
  could be using
• What about the learning experience?
• ie move towards holistic model

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Internal Challenges
Student Services

• SSD filling the gaps and aligning service
  quality
• UWE - Academic administration and institutional
  procedures are inconsistent
• Makes comparing like with like difficult
• Can provide a convenient cover to do nothing

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Faculty Student Advisors Service
Student Services

• Biggest impact on evaluation of Faculty Student
  Advisory Service
• Management and resource Faculty-based
• Coordination, training quality standards SSD
• Data collection and storage is different across
  Faculties.

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Discussion
Student Services

• How can we align the FSAS with
• the services provided in SSD
• the Quality standards being developed in SSD
• How can we achieve Faculty buy-in?

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Activity
Student Services

• 3 Key points from todays workshop

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Student Services

• Thank you for participating today
• Theresa McGoldrick
• Director of Student Services
• University of the West of England
• 0117 328 2566
• theresa.mcgoldrick_at_uwe.ac.uk