How do Students in Art and Design Respond to the National Student Survey (NSS)?

This Group for Learning in Art & Design (GLAD) and ADM-HEA funded project aimed to illuminate the ways that students interpret the scope and nature of terms used in the National Student Survey.

Twelve final year BA (Hons) students – six from each of two post-92 universities – were individually interviewed in 2011, after the students had completed the NSS. The purpose was to establish how students in Art and Design respond to seven NSS items (1, 4, 7, 8, 9, 15, 18) that had been identified as potentially problematic for the subject area, plus the final ‘overall satisfaction’ item (22).

The outcomes share some similarities with those found in a study undertaken by the Language, Linguistics and Areas Studies Subject Centre (Canning, 2011) in that questions were, on occasion, given an interpretation different from the intentions of the NSS, and that a ‘whole programme’ perspective was not always adopted. It will come as no surprise to colleagues in Art and Design that some of the NSS questions were felt not to be a good fit with the relevant disciplines.

A fuller account of this study will be presented on 25 April, at an event organised by the Group for Learning in Art & Design at Kingston University http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/events/detail/2012/25_April_GLAD_Conference. 

The final report will be accessible from the Networks website.

Reference

Canning, J. (2011) ‘Languages, linguistics and area studies students in the National Student Survey 2011’, http://www.llas.ac.uk/resources/paper/6481.

 

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