PTES 2014 Update

1. PTES 2014 Update

2. Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey 2014 • 112 Expressions of interest to date • (97 EoIs in 2013 of whom 89 took part) • Earliest launch date: 3 February • Latest launch date: 30 April • Live benchmarking: mid May • Last possible close date: 19 June • Benchmarking stable: 20 June • Benchmarking reports: mid July

3. www.heacademy.ac.uk/ptes

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7. Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey Revised • PTES has been significantly revised for 2014 after research and sector-wide consultation; • Analysis of previous PTES results to explore how well scales were working; • Consultation on topics to be included in new survey; • Interviews with 77 taught postgraduates, representing a broad range of students, from across 11 Universities; • Final recommendations discussed by the PTES advisory group.

8. What PTES 2014 covers • In addition to 13 NSS questions, including overall satisfaction, PTES covers: • dissertation / major project; • higher level skills, including creativity and research skills; • student engagement, including working with peers, workload, course challenge, and independent learning; • support and guidance, including induction and careers.

9. What PTES 2014 covers Extract from the report “Cognitive Review of Survey Items at Postgraduate Level” by CooperGibsonResearch, 2014

10. What PTES 2014 covers • There are 18 attitudinal questions that can give fairly clear trend data… • The change in direction of the scale, with agree options now to the left, makes a positive trend likely; • Existing questions in teaching & learning (5), assessment & feedback (3), dissertation (3), organisation & management (3), and resources (3); • Questions on support for learning and subject specific resources have changes to wording that may make a significant difference to response.

11. What PTES 2014 covers • In addition to the 37 attitudinal questions, PTES gathers information on: • student motivations to choose the course they did, and perceptions of information that helped them decide; • key demographics e.g. age, mode, employment; • support for understanding English; • the amount of time they have been out of study and how they are now funding their studies.

12. What PTES 2014 covers • In addition to 60 closed questions/items, PTES gathers student comments on: • comments about each topic e.g. on assessment and feedback; • the most interesting or exciting part of their course; • the one thing they would like to improve; • how institutions could better provide information to help course decisions.

13. Changes to PTES • Discussion • How do the changes impact on your communication to staff and students? • Have you had any feedback from staff? • Should we be doing anything now to support your analysis?

14. Raising Response Rates

15. Three rules for getting good response rates Personalise emails and make them informal; Publicise what you have done in response to student feedback; Use a hyperlink that passes the student to the survey directly from the email. 3½. Send lots of emails…

16. Raising Response Rates the institutional view

17. Raising Response Rates • Discussion: How could you, or do you plan to… • Monitor response rates and encourage inter-department competition; • Use hyperlink URLs and personalisedemails; • Publicise what you have done in response to feedback.

19. Getting PTES up and running

20. Institutional questions • Why add bespoke questions? • Get feedback on issues specific to your institution • Drill-down into areas of concern identified in PTES 2013 • Get feedback on recent enhancements and initiatives • Continue monitoring trends for questions no longer in PTES • Engage staff and students’ union in the design of the survey

21. Institutional questions • However: • Bespoke questions are not benchmarkable • They will add to the survey completion time • They will add to the work involved in analysis and reporting • Ideally, questions should be tested prior to inclusion

22. Institutional questions • Possible areas for consideration: • Application process • Teaching consistency and workload • Specific learning resources provided at your institution • Student support services • Employer engagement • Expectations • Importance of aspects of provision • Would you recommend this course/institution to a friend?

23. Institutional questions • Discussion:: • How many institutional questions do you use? • What questions have you found useful? • What are the main difficulties you have found?

24. The Support Tool

25. Benchmarking for 2014 • Benchmarked data available via BOS from mid-May; • Comparison to pre-set benchmarking groups; • Basic tables of results; • Standard Benchmarking Reports via HEA from mid-July; • Detailed by subject statistical analyses; • Include custom benchmarking groups for additional cost.

26. Pre-loading data for PTES 2015

27. Pre-loading data into the survey • Why? • Would make the survey much shorter; • Institutional data more reliable; • Course specific benchmarking • How? • Formatted data could be loaded via survey platform; • Formatted data could be sent to HEA; • When? • Survey platform changing for 2015 could make this possible as part of survey process; • Increasing demand for change.