Enhancing the Student Experience Wednesday 28 November 2007 Applications to HE – What makes a good Admissions Experience? Virginia Isaac Director of Business Development, UCAS Janet Graham Director, SPA

Introduction Why should the experience of applying for a course be any different from applying for a good job? With an all-electronic system, does ‘speed’ mean better or worse? If admissions’ decisions can be made in under an hour – is this good or bad for students? Where can students find the best, most accurate and relevant, information – from official sources or from blogs, forums and application support companies? The workshop will explore what makes a good admissions experience from both a student’s and admissions personnel’s point of view. Speed of response and being kept informed are key to a good customer experience, yet HE are urged to used a ‘gathered field’ of applicants before making decisions. Often HE applicants have to wait many weeks for the outcome of decisions and if unsuccessful may not be given helpful feedback when they request it.

What we will cover Virginia Isaac will draw on the completely different approaches of two brand new websites – Unistats and which both aim to communicate and inform students in very different ways and consider the extent to which recent technological and social changes require a new more informal approach to obtaining information and advice. Janet Graham will draw on the work of both SPA and the Delivery Partnership in the areas of improving transparency in entry criteria and the fairness of the admissions decision making process in HEIs including: Entry Profiles Good practice statement on feedback to unsuccessful applicants You will be asked to contribute your views and examples of how your institution or organisation handles these issues, and your comments on how the applicant experience can be improved

Three questions? What do students need to know to make informed decisions and how is this information best made available, accessed and received? ‘An all-electronic applications process’ – does this help or hinder the applicants’ experience? How could the application process and then admissions decision making process be made more fair, transparent and be improved to enhance the applicant experience?

Key Factors – Application and decision making SEARCH and APPLY Relevant information Accessibility and usability Information source Advice and Guidance ADMISSION DECISION MAKING Speed of response Knowing what is happening Feedback PERSONALISATION Customisation Facility to make changes Role of technology

Two case studies – Unistats and

Key features Compare UCAS tariff points on entry to an HEI and other information for different subjects and institutions Find out the achievements of recent students and discover what sort of jobs they are doing six months after finishing Read what over 177,000 students felt about the quality of their higher education experience

Shortlist

Compare – overview

Institution commentaries Institutions can add commentaries against the information shown on the Unistats site Commentaries are managed via the Unistats Content Management System ( Institutions should contact their Unistats Super User or the Support Team at UCAS (institutions only) or Institutions are informed, by the Support Team, about the NSS Dissemination Site, where necessary.

Compare - UCAS points and entry info

Compare – National Student Survey

Compare – Degree class & continuation

Compare – Employment prospects

Welsh

Home Page

Members’ Page

Forums

Forums ‘Home’

Groups

Get Spotted!

Get Spotted Entries

Get spotted! Winner announced Based either on user ratings alone or based on combination of user ratings and yougo panel or clients thoughts