It's That Time of Year... Pursuing Quality Excellence

STUDENT SATISFACTION, NET PROMOTER SURVEYS,LEAGUE TABLES, RANKINGS AND NOT FORGETTING DIFFICULT COMPLAINTS AND APPEALS…

For those in search of improving their higher education institution’s baseline position, pursuing excellent quality can feel like a never-ending list of tasks to improve, manage or enhance.

Working strategically and operationally through many complex challenges in quality enhancement can feel challenging, especially when everyone needs some time to recuperate, recharge and rebuild their passion for their subject. Below are some of the approaches used over many cycles of academic leadership and management by our team. 

NSS (NATIONAL STUDENT SURVEY)

Not everything will be as it first appears in quantitative trends, RAGs and standard deviation. Consider spending some time in open conversations or time in class with those on the ground, and capitalise on those stolen moments.

Look to your students, lecturers and course leaders. They may have hidden treasure insights which require little in the way of excavation. Engage with these stakeholders, and look to how you may be able to use their experience to form new best practice over the summer. The glass might be half-full when looking closely. 

Change the narrative from problem-solving to excellence expansion.

REFLECT ON YOUR CHEERLEADERS

Do all you can to keep, see and share those who love their experience. It is not sycophancy if this helps you to cherish the underlying excellence that enabled that joy and pleasure to be experienced. Consider the situational context surrounding your net promoters narrative. 

What could be put in place structurally to better enable more clusters of happiness and intellectual stretch to live joyfully side by side next cycle? 

LEAGUE TABLE METHODOLOGIES

Try to think dispassionately about League Table methodologies. While lobbying and informing can help at some points in the cycle, this is a time to prepare for strategic ‘ways of working’ which best represent your key mission, audience and institution to those who may otherwise read without understanding. 

Ask yourself, what three things could you ask from your academic team and your professional team in September to improve the evidence/ data purity driving metrics in the next cycle?

RANKING ‘LIKE FOR LIKE’

Should you scope new, innovative rankings which better reflect the distinctive strength of your institution? Look more widely across global measures, educational gain, industry positioning, distinctive mission values: are there quality badges, frameworks or rankings that would quickly demonstrate your position and progress against more ‘like for like’ companies/ organisations/ institutions?

Consider what distinctive and alternative rankings and/or badges of excellence might add to thicken the institutional storytelling to prospective students, families and trust networks.

NURTURE PRIDE & CREATE RESONANCE

This is a time of deep pride among graduates, students and academics. Whether through case study stories, mileage travelled or ability to overcome, we will hear many heartfelt stories from those around us in the joy of graduation and awards panels. 

Encourage everyone around you to share those that have impressed them, surprised them or renewed their love of ‘what we do’, platforming the individuals at the heart of the story. Humble individuals will soon lose their belief in their achievements when the reality of life kicks back in, but their achievements remain, with lifelong effects. 

Ask your teams to record and share these rich and complex stories with your comms teams. Clearing is a time to personalise ambition and results through human-centred storytelling. 

CONSIDER THE PATTERNS IN COMPLAINTS & APPEALS

As those students who feel the disappointment, hurt, pain or loss of missed opportunities to learn, flourish or achieve their potential appear in our inboxes, panels and committees, reflect on small but emerging trends over time or in clusters. While large swings will be overt and require immediate action, it is in minutiae or discreet patterns where your institution may find opportunity, a unique response or pilot to support these people to succeed more and faster next year.

Use your own eye to map small trends and enable latent enhancement initiatives.

Seek to move beyond the systemic: build pilot learning, embrace excellence and look laterally at well-known challenges. Listen closely to those hard to hear. 

The summer gives us stolen moments to do both while acting decisively and with precision on those super-urgent risks. You’re not alone! 

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