JISC

The Final Report is one of three JISC-funded studies put into good practice and technology-supported approaches to recruitment and admissions.

Executive Summary 

The final report is intended to inform the work of the larger scale technical demonstrator projects on e admissions. While the JISC context of the study is to identify how e-learning can benefit learners, practitioners and educational institutions in general and to provide useful tools for e-admissions in particular, the wider Higher Education context is the current debate about whether applicants should be given the reasons behind the decisions on their applications, and if so, what are the best mechanisms for doing so.

The debate has informed the consultation ‘Improving the HE Applications Process,’and we believe this study helps to clarify what is good practice in the provision of feedback to HE applicants. This study aimed to look at how the employment sector feeds back to job applicants, analyse this information to identify good practice and its applicability to HE admissions, and to present potential models for transfer to the provision of feedback to HE applicants by HEIs. We were particularly interested in models for the generation of feedback to large numbers of applicants, which suggests a technology-supported approach, and models which would assure the quality of feedback, placing the needs of the applicant at the centre of the process.

The study was also tasked with recommending priority areas for development, so that ICT systems used in the provision of feedback to individuals could be made more effective. We obtained basic information about current practice by employers through a survey of a cross-section of employing organisations. The first part of the survey enabled the construction of a profile of the employer, while the second part was focused on the practice surrounding feedback to job applicants. We followed up a small number of employers with in-depth questioning about their feedback mechanisms. In addition to quantitative analysis, we used a process improvement model to help to characterise the employers’ practice, and to compare this with HE practice in respect of HE course applicants. Drawing on existing recommendations from the Schwartz review, the QAA Code of Practice, responses to the question on feedback in the consultation ‘Improving the HE Applications Process’ and the project team’s knowledge of HE admissions, we drafted a Statement of Good Practice. We developed models to describe the feedback systems, using a format compatible with the outputs of the eP4LL Reference Model Project. We analysed the employer survey quantitatively and presented the results in the study. Feedback was commonly given only when requested, and most frequently dealt with performance at interviews and on recruitment tests. Employers generally regarded the personalised approach as more important than efficiency. Few electronic tools were used, the most common being email. There was a marked lack of integration of feedback systems into other electronic systems. Few employers had an effective quality assurance system in place. From our information in the study we created a generic model of common good practice amongst employers. We investigated HEI requirements through extensive interviews with practitioners, coupled with a review of existing literature, from which we wrote a generic list of HEI requirements for a feedback system. We concluded that most employers’ processes for giving feedback to job applicants were not at a higher level of development than those of the best HEIs’ processes for giving feedback to HE applicants. Furthermore, while the feedback systems of employers and of HE admissions had several characteristics in common, there were significant differences in the communications mechanisms, the existence of UCAS for example, and the expectations of potential recipients of feedback, that coloured our recommendations.

Recommendations

We make seven specific recommendations about good practice in this field:

• Provide information early
• Respond appropriately
• Always respond
• Get the evidence
• Communicate efficiently and effectively
• Know your feedback system works

We summarised our findings with an ‘HE Application Model,’ an aspirational view of good practice. Finally we recommend that the issues of confidentiality, feedback for formative assessment purposes and the usefulness and implementation of structured feedback be the subject of further work.

Read the final report below