The Annual Student Priorities for Education report is a comprehensive overview of student feedback throughout the year.
It aims to provide a snapshot of the educational issues facing UCL students and makes recommendations to UCL on how to tackle them. It looked at 6 main areas:
- Teaching and delivery
- Assessment and feedback
- Student support
- Department and Learning community
- Organisation and Management
- Facilities
The report drew on 3,662 comments from 192 sets of Student Partnership Committee (SPC) minutes, focus groups and workshops with academic representatives, and wider sectoral research to understand both where we are and where we should aim to go.
This report would not have been possible without the work of all of the student representatives who sit on the SPC meetings.
Thank you for your hard work over the last year.
What we learnt about education at UCL
Our research highlights both areas of strength and areas where UCL can do better. While UCL are making important steps to address student concerns, there remain three key areas where improvements are needed: facilities, assessment and feedback, and organisation and management.
These are the areas where student sentiment was the most negative, and where concerns have consistently been expressed for years. The report makes 14 recommendations to UCL on how these issues can be tackled.
Teaching and Learning
Teaching and Learning was where students expressed the most positive sentiment of any category. This is consistent with UCL's NSS results, demonstrating it is an area of strength for UCL. It is clear, however, that there is more work to do in ensuring areas of best practice are implemented across the institution.
Learning resources was a key issue raised within SPC meetings. Students were generally positive about the quality of learning resources, like lecture recordings and slides, highlighting their importance in supplementing teaching and in preparation for exams.
However, there were concerns about the availability of learning resources, with more needing to be done to ensure they are consistently made available to students.
Students praised staff for using innovative and creative teaching methods to make learning enjoyable and accessible. They also highlighted the importance of interactive teaching methods in helping ensure students absorb taught content.
Where students' expressed negative sentiments, they highlighted issues regarding teaching delivery being too fast, teaching not being interactive enough, and a variable quality of guest lectures.
Programme or module content was another key topic raised in SPC meetings. It is an area UCL are currently reviewing with the Programme Excellence Project.
Students were largely positive, reserving particular praise for courses that incorporated practical elements and a wide variety of topics. Students' have also highlighted the importance of integrating cutting edge research and scholars from marginalised communities into course curriculums.
Assessment and Feedback
Assessment and Feedback continues to be a key area of concern. It was the area with the most student comments of any category.
Consistent with previous years, feedback remains overwhelmingly negative, with students reporting concerns about the quality and promptness of feedback, the lack of clear guidance and information regarding the format of exams, and the bunching of assessments.
The quality and promptness of feedback was the topic most frequently raised within this category. Students reported that feedback is frequently not returned within UCL's 20 working days policy, and often lacks detail or is perceived as inconsistent.
Assessment preparation was another key issue. Students expressed concerns that they did not feel adequately prepared for their assessments, with a lack of guidance and course content often not aligning with what is assessed. Students stressed the importance of formative assessments in helping them prepare and build confidence.
The timing of assessment is an issue that has been consistently raised, and that UCL have committed to addressing. Students raised concerns with the bunching of assessment deadlines. Another important issue is assessment deadlines clashing with religious observances, including during Ramadan and Shabbat.
Student support
Student Support refers to the range of measures UCL implement to aid students in navigating their academic experience, including personal tutors, transition mentoring, and provisions in place to support disabled students.
UCL have taken important steps in this area over the past year, developing a Personal Tutoring Project to overhaul the personal tutoring system and a 'Beyond the SoRA' programme to develop a systemic refreshed approach to reasonable adjustments.
Students continued to raise issues regarding student support processes, often revolving around personal tutoring, highlighting the importance of the work UCL is doing in this area.
However, there were concerns regarding inconsistencies in personal tutor processes and gaps in support for disabled studies, especially in relation to SoRAs being implemented correctly.
Transition and induction was an area raised frequently by students, and one where there are high levels of student satisfaction. Students highlighted the importance of induction events in fostering community and helping students feel welcomed at UCL. There is more, however, that can be done to support PGT and PGR students in this area.
Careers and personal development was another frequently raised topic. Positive comments highlighted the importance and utility of careers events, while negative comments focused on requests for these to be expanded, better publicised, and for specific types of careers support.
Departmental and Learning Community
Students sense of their Department and Learning Community is central to their wellbeing and wider academic experience. Student comments in this category mainly focused on the topics of social and community, common and study areas, and student voice.
The Student Life Strategy being developed in partnership by UCL and the Students' Union is a key opportunity to drive improvements in this area. One key project is the development of departmental societies. Successfully scaling these up across UCL will go a long way to addressing student concerns in this area.
Common and study areas was a topic which students were overwhelmingly negative about, highlighting the need for greater access to shared space. A lack of dedicated space also prevents students from developing a community and social support network, a particularly important issue for PGR students.
Social and community was raised frequently by student representatives. Students emphasised the positive effects of socials for improving student wellbeing and feelings of belonging within cohorts. There were requests for social events that bridge between departments, reflecting previous findings by the Students’ Union that postgraduate students feel siloed into departments.
Student voice was a third key area, referring to the extent to which students are able to feed back to staff, be heard, and be part of decision making. Reflecting UCL's NSS results, students feel they are given adequate opportunities to give feedback on their courses, but are often unsure whether feedback is leading to positive changes.
Organisation and Management
Organisation and Management encompass important topics including communication, class timetabling, and departmental IT. Student feedback in this area was overwhelmingly negative, indicating a clear need for improvements.
Exam timetabling was an issue frequently raised by students, with most issues raised highlighting the issue of exams being bunched together, giving students little to prepare between each one and raising levels of stress.
Communication was another important area. Students were appreciative when staff members were consistent in regularly communicating them, and when key information was received through different mediums.
There were concerns, however, that timetabling changes are often communicated at late notice, and that emails with important information are often not concise or accessible to read, a particularly important issue for disabled and neurodivergent students.
There were also issues raised regarding departmental IT, in particular in relation to Moodle pages and attendance monitoring software.
There are clearly discrepancies between courses in how well Moodle pages are organised
and kept up to date between courses, highlighting the need for a standard format across UCL.
UCL's SEAtS attendance monitoring software was reported to frequently not work. Ensuring this issue is rectified is of particular importance for international students, given that for many their recorded attendance has implications for whether they are complying with their visa conditions.
Facilities
Students felt negative about Facilities, with the highest proportion of negative comments of any category. The three key areas of concern related to Teaching Rooms, Lecture Capture, and UCL Buildings.
Many students expressed dissatisfaction about the size of teaching rooms, particularly for lectures. Students reported that teaching rooms are often 'cramped’, ‘crowded’ and ‘stuffy’, making it difficult for students to concentrate .
Other issues related to teaching rooms included a lack of availability of charging points, poor WiFi coverage in certain areas, unsuitable furniture, and poor ventilation.
Lecture capture is another issue that has been raised consistently for many years. Lecture recordings are particularly important for disabled and neurodivergent students who can face more barriers to attending teaching live.
Where lectures are recorded and uploaded promptly to Moodle, students were positive about the impact they had. However, the vast majority of comments on the issue were negative, highlighting cases of staff not uploading lectures or rooms not being equipped to record them in the first place.
What we recommend
Facilities
- Commit significant investment into educational and social spaces as a priority, including a Students’ Union building and the continuous improvement of teaching spaces.
- Improve the availability and functionality of charging sockets and WiFi coverage across libraries, study areas, and communal spaces.
- Expand the quantity of bookable group study spaces across campus, with appropriate technology to support collaborative learning.
- Work with Birkbeck to ensure that teaching spaces used by UCL are fully equipped to meet UCL standards, including Lecturecast and attendance monitoring software
- Enhance the MyCampus tool by allowing students to submit suggestions for proactive improvements, not solely to report issues.
- Invest in increasing the availability of teaching and social spaces for postgraduate students.
Assessment and Feedback
- Improve support, supervision and renumeration for all Postgraduate Teaching Assistants to ensure they are renumerated for sufficient hours to provide high quality and timely feedback on student assessments.
- Implement the Programme Excellence Project in full, ensuring that departments and faculties are adequately reviewing assessment practices in line with learning outcomes
- Ensure staff are consistently complying with UCL’s policy of returning feedback within 20 working days, and that departments are adequately resourced to deliver this
- Address the longstanding issue of assessment bunching and a lack of diversified assessments, helping students develop the skills needed for their careers while also reducing pressure on staff and therefore allowing for higher quality feedback.
Organisation and Management
- Address short-term issues with scheduling to ensure student timetables are delivered in a timely manner ahead of the implementation of changes stemming from the Programme Excellence Project
- Work with departments to ensure a consistent format for Moodle pages to ensure they are clearly organised and key information is easily accessible.
- Ensure there is a consistent level of staff support across departments, with improved staff training and resourcing to ensure student staff partnership is achieving effective outcomes.
- UCL should address the widespread dissatisfaction with slow communication by implementing strategies to enhance the speed and clarity of communication.