Informing student experience priorities beyond post-pandemic recovery

Coinciding with celebrating its 150th year, University of Canterbury now has its largest ever combined enrolment of domestic and international students on campus, having come out of Covid all guns blazing and looking to build momentum in terms of growing back international student numbers post-pandemic, but also engaging students and alumni around the world. 

We hear from Associate Director International, Monique van Veen, as she discusses how the International Student Barometer is helping the university understand where their strengths lie, and prioritise the areas of focus in order to achieve the university’s strategic objectives. 

Taking the university’s pulse 

University of Canterbury has worked with the International Student Barometer for several years, and prior to 2023 last ran the survey in 2020. Having had that pause through Covid times Monique acknowledges it felt right to then evaluate where the university was at with the performance of its student experience compared to their 2019-20 benchmarks. 

“We wanted to see what kind of differences there were compared to 2019; to gauge the effect of three years of online learning for students, acknowledging the fact that we couldn't possibly emulate the same student experience as before. But we had also had three years of trying to implement all these new creative approaches to the student experience and to student support. So, we needed to enable our students to tell us how things were.” 

The stakeholder team at Canterbury received their ISB report in September, and due to the gap between surveys, and all that had happened in between, Monique was naturally apprehensive, but the results were incredibly positive.  

“Many of the students participating in the survey had been studying online, and this was their first semester on campus, so we weren’t quite sure what to expect in that sense. Of course, we had put a lot of hard work into maintaining a high-quality student experience, but still, overall we were pleasantly surprised by the ISB results. Overwhelmingly, our 2023 scores had improved compared to our 2020 results. And that's our biggest focus – comparing our performance over time to continually improve.”  

The value of benchmarking 

As well as benchmarking against themselves, Monique also places particular value in the New Zealand benchmark comparisons. 

“As Director of our student experience team I’m thrilled to see us outperform the New Zealand benchmark in important areas such as overall satisfaction (91% vs 89% NZ); our Net Promoter Score (17 vs 11 NZ); value for money (80% vs 77% NZ); and overall learning satisfaction (93% vs 89% NZ).” 

Like many institutions participating in the ISB, University of Canterbury involves a lot of staff in the feedback and reporting sessions presented by their ISB Consultant. This increases awareness of the results, and how the university is doing compared to their chosen benchmarks and their longitudinal data. As well as involving the likes of Directors of Recruitment, Marketing, and various faculty leads, the survey results are actively shared widely across the university, including publishing the analysis on their intranet to further widen engagement.  

Deep-dives for deep insights 

Because of the depth of data and analysis available via the ISB, such stakeholders are able to conduct deeper dives into their particular areas of interest, an example being the university’s Director of Recruitment. He took a lot of interest in the data around the relationship with agents; how students fair in that journey of applying to UC; how well the university’s work with agents is going; whether their agents are living by the New Zealand Code of practice – something of great importance to UC -  and what the implications are for how agent training is implemented. This is just one of the comprehensive areas analysed by the survey. 

One of Monique’s missions is to work closely with faculties across the university so they too can appreciate the full breakdown of all their ISB results, identifying strengths and scrutinising areas for improvement. 

“The ISB is perfect for enabling that internal communication about the importance of student experience, why it matters, and how it feeds into our Net Promoter Score as well as a host of other really important metrics."  

An authentic voice 

Another outcome of the ISB cited by many participating institutions is the impact it has on the authenticity of communications. Because Marketing and Recruitment campaigns are able to draw on evidence-based strengths, those messages carry more authenticity, whether they come from the institutions themselves of their agent networks. So, students arriving at the university have certain expectations - about support services, or accommodation, or quality of learning – and the university is better able to meet those expectations because they have come from a place of objectivity – the real experiences of previous students.  

Evaluating initiatives and informing resourcing decisions 

For Monique and her team, there’s also a strong interest in the orientation and transition side of things.

“During students’ arrival, and their first six weeks on campus, that is where we are at our most active. That's the point where they are talking to their families at home about how things are going and they're possibly still engaging with their agent - we want to really understand what that experience is like for them, and what initiatives or activities are contributing to them settling down well, and positively contributing to their wellbeing. That’s a really important part of the ISB.” 

Another area of particular importance to UC is students’ sense of belonging. One of the faculties, the UC Business School, conducted its own deeper dive into the faculty-specific data and results, discovering there were several areas that were performing particularly well: the support students experienced, their sense of belonging, and the feedback they were giving being taken seriously and acted upon scored really highly. This of course provides the faculty with a real sense of satisfaction, and is testament to the faculty’s provision, as well as the work the International team puts in to implement things like focus groups, informal chats, and opportunities for students to tell them what's working and what's not.  

“Whether it's through peer mentoring or creating dedicated spaces for international students on campus, it was really nice to see that that seems to have come through and students agreeing that their voices are being heard.” 

Addressing lower performing aspects of the student experience 

Of course, all institutions working with the ISB are also keen to understand what isn’t working quite so well – where they can focus their attentions and resources to improve the student experience. One of the areas many universities look to, including UC, is that of the initial welcome for international students due to its fundamental impact on their overall experience of life at their study destination. Compared to their previous results, UC’s performance in this area had dropped. Monique puts this down to, in part, some of the arrival initiatives they had pre-Covid not being reinstated in quite the same manner, but the evidence in the ISB gives greater clarity to this aspect of the student experience, and the university’s response has been rapid. 

“We've been able to respond to this really quickly. For semester 1 next year, we're building back our presence again at the airport, involving our student volunteers greeting the new students. The long-term aim is to instigate airport pick-ups again, so we can drop them off at their accommodation. What’s really beneficial when considering potential initiatives is having the evidence, not just the anecdotal stuff, to back-up the decisions to focus resource on specific areas. We use the ISB analysis of derived importance to make the biggest improvements in the areas that matter most to students – it’s really key. And then of course it helps us advocate for resourcing in the most appropriate places.” 

One area where the university has already impacted the student experience off the back of their previous results is that of support for those students who were staying in New Zealand over the long summer period. Monique analysed the data alongside students’ free-text comments to highlight a significant gap in student support and a drop in the student experience when the university closed for two months from December January. UC’s response was a sizeable piece of work that Monique’s team conducted with every single faculty to identify Kiwi Summer Champions. So, people who wanted to host international students over summer, whether it was for a BBQ at their family home or something on Christmas Day, or just a chance for academics in the faculty to get to know students on a personal level during that one-off down-time. It’s a whole-university initiative that has really worked, to the extent that a lot of those students involved have said how they have become long-term friends with their Kiwi Summer Champions. 

University of Canterbury, with the help of the ISB, and the dedication of Monique and her team, have bounced back beyond pre-Covid levels of performance when it comes to the international student experience. As their numbers continue to grow, they have the insights and data to ensure the student experience and quality of education maintain the same upwards trajectory, for all international student populations.