National Student Survey 2013
What is the NSS?
The National Student Survey (NSS) is a national online survey open to all final year undergraduate students which provides an opportunity to give their opinions and assessment on the overall quality of courses within their institution. Final Year students across the country are currently or will shortly be being contacted about this year's National Student Survey.
The survey has been ongoing since 2005 aimed at all publicly funded Higher Education Institutions in the UK. This survey is conducted on behalf of the Government and is designed to provide information to help prospective students decide which University to attend
How BMS students can help
In previous surveys Biomedical Science students have done well to meet the completion rate. This year, if the percentage is too low the survey will not get published, so we encourage all our final year students to complete it.
As with any generic survey, some of the questions may appear a little vague, and so with the support of information obtained from various student focus groups we provide the following information aimed at helping you to interpret some of the questions. However your final interpretation of the questions and responses to them should be entirely your own!
Use 5s and 1s, not just 4s and 2s!
A significant point that came out from our focus groups is that many students feel reluctant to give a '5' (or a `1ยด) on the scale, because it is all to easy to think of one bad example in an otherwise problem-free experience. This means that respondents tend not to want to say 'Definitely Agree' as it might imply 100% agreement. However, on such a limited scale 5 doesn't really mean '100% perfect', so if overall you think the course was very good, even if there were one or two bad examples, please don't feel shy of using '5'! Of course, the same goes for using 1 instead of 2.
Use N/A instead of 3
Because the same survey is used for every student in all the Universities sampled some of the questions aren't applicable to everyone, or are too vague for a specific degree programme. If you think that a question is not relevant to you, then you should mark it 'N/A': 'N/A' responses are counted separately.
What do the questions mean?
Teaching: this section is intended to be 'in general' rather than to reflect specific lecturers, and was thought by the focus groups to be fairly clear.
Assessment/Feedback: in answering this, it helps if all forms of feedback are taken into account, including face-to-face feedback (e.g. in practical classes, tutorials, BMS320 meetings, exam paper feedback sessions), student-staff committee, as well as written feedback, email contact, MOLE discussion boards, generic assessment feedback etc.
Academic Support: some people thought this section referred to Personal Tutorials, others to Handbooks, etc. Those who hadn't felt they needed any advice felt it especially difficult to answer. You will need to think carefully about how you interpret this question as the focus groups responses do not give any particular direction.
Organisation: this section was thought to be fairly clear, although in q13 'activities' was vague; after some discussion within the focus groups it was decided that it ought to refer to academic activities not paid work, sport or extracurricular activities.
Learning Resources: people tended to think of physical resources rather than virtual ones such as access to the web, on-line journals, MOLE, etc. The distinction between 'general' and 'specialised' resources was unclear; 'general' was thought of as access to computers and networked resources; specialised was taken to mean things needed for your degree programme (e.g. lab equipment and so on). Again you will need to think carefully about the interpretation of this question.
Personal Development: Most people here focused on their confidence in giving presentations, but it was recognised that there was a lot more to it than that. It should cover how you feel you have developed as an individual during the last few years at University, and that includes the wide range of activities you have undertaken.
Those who felt they were already confident at the start of the course found these questions difficult, since they didn't feel the course had increased their confidence - if anything it had made them aware that they didn't know everything! Again this is another example of a question that you might need to think about carefully and consider the N/A option if you remain uncertain.
The comments above are designed to encourage you to respond to the NSS and to be aware of the need to think carefully about the responses you make, and to make full use of the range of responses available to you. What you say and how you respond is, of course, entirely up to you.