Involving students as partners in digital transformation

This project will explore student engagement related to their digital learning experience. We will also seek evidence of where student partnership is helping to build digital skills, especially for future employability.

We recognise that students should always be at the heart of decisions that shape their learning experience, in line with the Office for Student (OfS) requirements. Digital transformation works better when students are partners, not just participants.

We want this project to make a difference to student experience and belonging, and we will seek to uncover and share good practice, and enable peer-learning around these themes.

This is timely with the TEF (Teaching Excellence Framework) due to be submitted in 2027, which should include where student’s engagement is embedded into quality assurance.

Our initial research also shows that students’ expectations are evolving, particularly around employability and building the digital skills that they will need in the workplace. And gathering and understanding student feedback is happening in an increasingly noisy digital world, with fluctuating user needs and environment dynamics.

What we want to understand

• How do universities meaningfully involve students in shaping their (digital) learning experience?
• What are the benefits of involving students directly in technology decision making? (To students, to academic staff, to the institutions’ goals for digital transformation)
• What are the feasible methods for student engagement to support digital transformation, and how do these work in practice? What could help practitioners to more easily access these methods?
• To what extent can we apply user-centre design to the student (digital) experience – and how do we do that?

How we will work together

We will be supported by a small expert group from HE institutions and facilitated by experts at Jisc in community, engagement, learning and learning technology.

Phase one: open discovery

Part A: laying the foundations (Sep - Oct 2026)

• Convene an expert group of HE members to steer and contribute to the project
• Desk research of existing research, guides, other information that could be usefully in determining practical approaches to ‘students shaping digital’
• Create mechanisms to gather stories of successful student engagement and partnership in technology decisions, implementation and transformation

Part B: opening up the conversation (Nov 2026 – Jan 2027)

• Publish a summary of desk research, with links to useful resources and explanation of how these can be used in practice
• Host discovery workshops to build on the problem space and enable sharing of good practice and challenges
• Share findings from discovery workshops and stories of success and learning gathered
• Expert group review of findings and determine whether to move to phase two, and what that could involve