NUS Student Engagement Toolkit: The Course Rep Benchmarking Tool University of Sheffield Students’ Union Neil Mackenzie Representation & Democracy Manager

Why? Why do we measure? What do we measure? How do we measure it?

Before Organisation required targets that were measurable (preferably numbers) Measured the easy things to measure, no discussion of why or what these numbers meant Distorted focus

Solution Course Rep Benchmarking tool offers a more strategic view of student representation Measures the things that show impact and effectiveness Allows focus on the areas that need attention

Solution However, institution wide snapshot was insufficient Provision for reps varied wildly across institution Institution wide targets were one of the problems of our previous work Needed to drive down to a departmental level

Solution Adapted questions and criteria where necessary to fit departmental level discussion Got departmental level reps, university staff and course reps to complete self-assessment Took averages to see departmental score and breakdown each criteria

Review Some excellent data, confirmed some of our assumptions, revealed significant strengths and weaknesses Completion in some areas was patchy, principally the departments that we were most interested in, these need more hands on work Time consuming and overly complex

Outcomes Gave us ‘mission groups’ of departments to tailor our work Allowed us to see our strengths and weaknesses more clearly and prioritise work Revealed particular weakness in our work with departmental staff and their understanding of representation

What now? Led to a large review of course representatives and departmental level representation Training will be overhauled Measures for the department are more useful and fixed on progress

Lessons We wouldn’t do it the same way again Needs to be simple, possibly based on face to face interviews in each department Confirmed the departmental variation issue Best practice is gold dust at departmental level – if one can do it, so can the others (except medicine...)

Questions/Comments The key is to be confident enough to ask the questions, no where has this right yet but we have to up our game, and fast Neil Mackenzie University of Sheffield Students’ Union n.mackenzie@shef.ac.uk 0114 222 8589