JISC

Summary

The project will apply service design and enhancement techniques to the learning and teaching and pastoral care of students in order to improve retention, progression and completion.  The outcomes will be of value to anyone designing and enhancing services to students; seeking to engage students, academic and support services to co-design services or developing approaches to identify and support students at risk.  We will increase understanding of operational processes as well as the application of ICT systems to support student engagement and will inform wider policy discussions regarding efficiency, quality standards and student perceptions of value added.

Objectives

Using service blueprinting, we will map contacts with students, focusing on expectations, rights and responsibilities; achievement and progression; and those at risk. We will identify fail and wait points which can lead to inefficiency, student withdrawal or non-progression, and the interdependencies which make up the felt student experience. The relationship between student expectations and university-led interventions will be explored as well as early warning systems and their operation from an academic tutor perspective. We will scope out the introduction of a data warehouse and traffic lighting system and will make proposals for service innovations.

Anticipated Outputs and Outcomes

• Blueprint of ‘as is’ service to students focused on their expectations, mapping of standard communications with students about achievement and progression; and those deemed to be at risk.
• Evaluation of the student experience of the services mapped in the blueprint with fail and wait points.
• Service enhancement plan and ‘to be’ service blueprint: a vision for the future design of services.
• Scoping study of how data on student engagement could be used to create a ‘dashboard’ for staff use. 
• Case study including fictional profiles (personas), storytelling and other service design scenarios.