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

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

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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...)

11. 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