1. Empowering students to use their voice to make institutional change
My name is Precious Taylor and I’m the Student Voice Officer working within the Student and Graduate Experience Team
My name is Jas Thindal and I work as a Student Voice Placement within the Student and Graduate Experience Team.
We are here today to discuss our roles at the University of Derby from a Student Voice perspective and how we empower students to use their voice to make institutional change.
Precious Taylor – Voice Officer
Jas Thindal – Voice Placement

2. Mechanisms for capturing student voice The level of engagement
We will cover…
Background
Mechanisms for capturing student voice
The level of engagement
How we close the loop
Questions
During this presentation we will be covering the following topics:
Background – University of Derby – Our Students Demographics
Mechanisms for capturing student voice – Onsite Mechanisms and Online Mechanisms
The level of engagement we have on each platform – areas for improvement/new developments we have in place to overcome challenges we have experienced previously.
Examples of Impact using the power of student voice - #DerbyUniPower
Any Questions you may have, we will have time to answer those at the end of the presentation.

3. About The University of Derby
The University of Derby’s Background:
Jas and I work within the Student and Graduate Experience Team which is a central team working on behalf of the institution to conduct qualitative and quantitative research utilitising a variety of research methods that include online surveys, focus groups to most recently social media. I’ll talk you in more detail about those mechanisms during others during this presentation.
Our main aim is to help collegues to be better informed with decision making for future planning. Our research can be about reviewing existing service offerings to getting feedback about new service offerings. Some of the research can be for one week, a month or sometimes a term.
3 Campuses – Chesterfield/Derby/Buxton Online Learning Platform - University of Derby Online Learning (UDOL) – Unique sites which have their own strengths and challenges in terms of engagement.
Commuter Students – 40% - we try to target this particular group of students as its hard to get commuter students engaged in onsite activities.
17/18 data:
Around 18,500 students based in the UK
3 campuses, 10 delivery sites
Mixed demographics – 37% under 21, 12% disability, 40% commuter students
Focus on widening participation – opportunity area. 47% of our students are local

4. How do we capture Student Voice?
Onsite Mechanisms
Online Mechanisms
Surveys
Student Panel
Student Reps
UDo Polls
Focus Groups
Onsite Mechanisms:
Student Reps – We work with the Union of Students at Student Rep conferences/events to empower their student voice e.g.
On The Ground Research – we conduct at our 3 campuses Chesterfield/Derby/Buxton – the research we conduct depends on what type of research has been requested.
Focus Groups – Encouraging students to come in and participate in focus groups.
Online Mechanisms:
Student Panel has changed from an Onsite Mechanism to Online Mechanism – Explain Why?
On The Ground Research
Social Media Polls
UDo – Tell us

5. Level of Engagement – UDo Poll
31 Polls
2,500 monthly
votes
22,500
Total votes
1. ‘How often do you check your Unimail?’ – 674 votes
2. ‘What motivates you the most’? – 938 votes
3. ‘How many books do you read in a year’? – 1080 votes
4. ‘Who do you think runs the programme rep schemes’? – 755 votes
Jas – On our Student Portal UDo we have a poll tile where we upload one poll once per week to ask students a question in relation to the University. All students have access to the poll. These questions are requested by other departments and the results are fed into improvements across the University. We also aim to align what polls go out on UDo and align this with the Student Communications Strand. It’s a quick and easy way for students to give their voice on possible University improvements. The UDo Poll results are posted on our social media channels so that students can understand what their results are feeding into.
Here are some examples of some of the most engaged polls we have ran throughout the academic year.

6. Level of Engagement – Surveys
11,500
Total Survey Responses (17/18)
Precious -

7. Level of Engagement - On The Ground Research
Graduate Attributes
Framework
(30 Responses)
Library
Co Creation
Project
(125 Responses)
Jas – One of main mechanisms we use to capture student voice onsite would be through ‘On The Ground Research’. This is one of the best ways in terms of capturing student feedback and student voice through a face to face conversation. We use Microsoft Forms and conduct OTGR with iPads and ask students questions based around the following topics that have been requested by other areas of the University. A fantastic way for students to understand who we are, how there voice will be influencing University decisions and establish new networks within the University.
A few examples of some of the OTGR we have conducted this year consists of, the Library Co Creation Project (3 year project dedicated to improving the Kedleston Road Library), Graduate Attributes Framework and the VLE Review (UDo – Student Portal
IT Services Feedback
(30 Responses)
VLE Review
(70 Responses)

8. Level of Engagement – Student Panel
667
Panel Members
Library Co-Creation Project
600
Responses
World Mental
Health Awareness 23
Responses
Precious - The Student Panel is one of the developments we have been working on throughout this academic year. We have recognised that previously when we have asked students to come into our campuses and attend focus groups the engagement rate was very low.
Therefore, we have established a online platform to transition many of our panel activities into an online format in the form of Polls Everywhere. This is currently in the early stages of development, however we have already recognised the high engagement rate we have received through collecting 603 responses from two panel activities which is fantastic.

9. Level of Engagement – Social Media
3,150 Followers
5,550 Followers
1,470 Followers

10. Extended Opening Times for the Library
How do we close the loop?
Extended Opening Times for the Library
£300,00 invested into Library resources this year
Free Unibus for all students – Increased usage by 58%
Student Voice
Page
Introduced night buses to accommodate extended opening hours

11. What we have covered?
Background
The Mechanisms we use for capturing student voice
The level of engagement on the mechanisms
Examples of impact –How we close the loop

12. Any Questions?