Student surveys

Surveys open in Trinity term 2023

Student Assessment Survey: open from 17 May to 7 July 2023

The 2023 Student Assessment Survey seeks feedback on taught students' experience of sitting in-person, computer-based exams to improve future exam practice and processes. Eligible students will only be e-mailed invitations with personalised links to the survey after they they have finished their last exam of the year.

Digital Education Technologies Annual Student Survey: open from 25 April to 12 May 2023

The Digital Education Technologies Annual Student Survey is run by the Centre for Teaching and Learning and aims to shape and improve the use of digital education tools at Oxford. Feedback will be used to help improve the use of facilities like Canvas, Oxford Reading Lists Online (ORLO), Panopto and MS Teams.  The 2023 survey opened on 25^th April and closed on 12^th May.

Student suggestions will be considered by the relevant support teams. If actionable, they will be attended to as soon as possible or put on a wish list for development and subjected to further scrutiny.

You can find out how the Centre for Teaching and Learning responded to feedback from last year’s survey in this ‘You said, we did’ article.

Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey: open from 18 April to 12 May 2023

The Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey (PTES) is run across over a hundred UK institutions and coordinated by Advance HE. It is the only national survey of postgraduate taught students’ experience of learning and teaching and so is the only way for us to compare how we are doing against the national average and to ma changes that will improve postgraduate students’ experience in the future.

If you are a postgraduate taught student, you will receive an email on or around 18 April 2023 with a personalised link, and the survey will take around 15 minutes to complete. 

Please take this opportunity to get involved this year and help us make improvements to the course for students like you. If you would like to know more about the survey, please visit the PTES website.

Postgraduate Research Experience Survey: open from 18 April to 12 May 2023

The Postgraduate Research Experience Survey (PRES) is run across over a hundred UK institutions and coordinated by Advance HE. It is the only national survey of postgraduate research students and so is the only way for us to compare how we are doing against the national average and to make changes that will improve postgraduate students’ experience in the future.

If you are a postgraduate research student, you will receive an email on or around 18 April 2023 with a personalised link, and the survey will take around 15 minutes to complete.

Please take this opportunity to get involved this year and help us make improvements to your experience and that of future students like you. If you would like to know more about the survey, please visit the PRES website.

National Student Survey (NSS): open from 26 January to 30 April 2023

The National Student Survey is a national survey of all students at UK universities, run by the Office for Students. It is aimed mainly at final-year undergraduates, and feedback not only contributes to improvements in the facilities, resources and teaching on offer to current students, but also helps prospective students choose the right institution and course for them. 

10 reasons to complete the National Student Survey | University of Oxford

It usually takes place between January and April each year. If you are a final year undergraduate student you will have received reminders by email in 2023 to complete the survey, or you can click on the National Student Survey to complete it using your student number from your University card.

The 2023 survey closed on 30 April with a 50.3% response rate, meaning that data from Oxford will eventually appear on the Office for Students website and will also be used to inform prospective applicants on the Discover Uni website.

University-wide surveys

Assessment Survey

The Assessment Survey seeks anonymous feedback regarding the assessment of taught students who have submitted coursework online or sat an in-person exam, whether online or on paper. Individualised links to the survey will start to be e-mailed to eligible students in Week 8 of Trinity term and the feedback gained will be used to improve the assessment experience for students in the future.

College WiFi

University IT Services would like to know student views on the quality of WiFi in colleges. This is to help ensure that this service meets the needs of all students. Results from this year will be compared with results from 2020 to determine the impact of changes made in this period. The 2022 survey closed on 31 December. 

Digital Education Technologies Student Survey (DETSS)

The Digital Education Technologies Student Survey (DETSS) is run by the Centre for Teaching and Learning and aims to shape and improve the use of digital education tools at Oxford. Feedback will be used to help improve the use of facilities like Canvas, Oxford Reading Lists Online (ORLO), Panopto and MS Teams.  The survey is new and launched in May 2022 and closed on 12 June.

Student suggestions will be considered by the relevant support teams. If actionable, they will be attended to as soon as possible or put on a wish list for development and subjected to further scrutiny. 

You can find out how the Centre for Teaching and Learning responded to feedback from the 2022 survey in this ‘You said, we did’ article.

PGR Supervision Pulse Survey 

A very short (7 question) survey was sent to all currently enrolled and active postgraduate research students (6,156) in September 2022. There were 1,415 responses received giving a response rate of 22%. All closed questions were concerned with their supervisory relationship. An equal proportion of students (43%) had either single or two main supervisors. The remaining 13% had a supervisory team. 

• The majority - 73% - said they had regular supervisory meetings of the right frequency. More than three quarters - 76% - said their supervisor(s) was always or usually available to them outside of scheduled meetings. The majority - 74% - said they always or usually received sufficient feedback on their written work and/or general progress from their supervisor(s). However, 11 % stated they did not receive sufficient feedback. 
• The majority - 70% - stated they always or usually felt comfortable to raise their concerns regarding their work or academic life with their supervisor(s). Just over a half - 57% - always or usually felt comfortable to raise their personal life issues affecting their academic work with their supervisor(s).
• A non-trivial proportion of 18% (256) of students stated they had a significant issue regarding their supervisory relationship. Out of those, only 10% were clear on where to seek help and 53% (135) did not know where to go for help.
• More in-depth results including analyses by gender, division and year of study will be made available to the Research Degrees Panel in HT23. More information about the survey can be obtained from surveys@admin.ox.ac.uk

If you are a DPhil student who is currently experiencing any issues with your supervisory relationship you can contact the following staff for advice:

1) Director of Graduate Studies (DGS) )/Director of Doctoral Research (or equivalent) in your department/faculty in the first instance, to discuss formal and informal approaches to resolving supervisory concerns (if you are unsure who your DGS is or feel the DGS may have a conflict of interest (e.g. if they are your supervisor and you don’t have a named alternative) please contact your graduate studies administrator for advice on who to speak to).

 2) Your college advisor.

 3) If you want to talk to someone about welfare related matters or have concerns over issues relating to mental health, please contact: Student Welfare and Support Services (swss@admin.ox.ac.uk).  

 You can also contact the Oxford SU Advice Service who can flag further sources of support. https://www.oxfordsu.org/support/studentadvice/

Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey 

2022 results

• The Oxford PTES 2022 survey was open between the 24th of March and the 17th of June. There were 4,387 active PGT and PGCert students invited to take part and 440 responses received, resulting in a response rate of 10%. The survey sample is broadly representative of the wide Oxford PGT population.

• Seventy-one percent of respondents were satisfied with the quality of their course, a slight increase from 2021 but lower than the level reported in 2020.
• PGT students were the most satisfied with resources (89% and higher than the sector) and teaching (77%). They were the least satisfied with the assessment (60%) and the organisation of their course (67%).
• Many PTES 2021 scores affected by the pandemic increased, or bounced back to pre-pandemic levels, including satisfaction with the staff contact time, opportunities to discuss work with other students, and both physical and remote access to resources.
• Over 80% of the respondents were satisfied with the University’s response to the pandemic, a substantial increase compared to 2021 and in line with the national responses.
• Students seem to be more happy and satisfied with life than anxious. There was evidence that those with a disability have lower wellbeing scores than those without, but no difference in anxiety levels. There was no consistent evidence for difference in wellbeing or anxiety scores between student genders, residence statuses, divisions or full-time vs part-time study mode
• Twenty percent of respondents have considered leaving their course, a substantial decrease since 2021, and comparable to the pre-pandemic 2020 results as well as the Sector and Russell Group averages. Those with a disability or studying full-time were more likely to consider leaving. Main reasons given were mental/emotional health and the course not meeting expectations.

2021 results

The University has opted to make the Postgraduate Taught/Research Experience Surveys (PTES and PRES) our primary method of obtaining feedback from postgraduate students.

• PTES 2021 was launched in HT 21 and was open between 23 March and 17 June. There were 6,351 active PGT and PG Cert students invited to take part and 794 responses were received, resulting in a response rate of 12.5%. The survey sample is representative of the wide Oxford PGT population.
• Generally Oxford scored lower than the Sector and a selection of the Russell Group institutions in all areas of student experience but dissertations. It is likely that the pandemic and remote teaching influenced some of the most pronounced decreases.
• Overall, 69% of respondents agreed they were satisfied with the quality of their course. This is markedly lower than 76% in 2020 and is likely to be caused by the remote teaching in HT 21.
• Teaching staff (75% satisfied) and dissertation support (77% satisfied) are regarded very highly by students. The Assessment and Feedback did not see any substantial decreases since last year. Online library resources (68%) and access to course specific resources (68%) were also rated high.
• Items such as contact time (49% satisfied), engagement with peers (50%) and support at the beginning of the course (50%) were rated relatively low and lower than in 2020.
• Only 59% of respondents agreed they received the support they needed from the University in relation to the Covid-19 pandemic. The awareness of various University provisions due to Covid-19 was rather low (fewer than 50% of respondents for most of them). However the vast majority of those who used them, found them helpful or very helpful.

Postgraduate Research Experience Survey

2021 results

The University has opted to make the Postgraduate Taught/Research Experience Surveys (PTES and PRES) our primary method of obtaining feedback from postgraduate students.

• The PRES 2021 survey was open between 24^th of March and 17^th of May 2021. All active PGR students (7,139) were invited to take part. There were 744 replies received resulting in a response rate of 10.4%. The sample is broadly representative of the divisional split in the Oxford PGR population.
• In general, it is clear that DPhil students were affected by a pandemic to a much lesser extent than PGT students. Overall, 73% of respondents were satisfied with their experience of their research degree programme. This is lower than 79% in 2020. However, 71% of respondents were confident they would complete their programme on time, which remained the same as last year.
• In general PRES scale scores in 2021 have decreased slightly since 2020, but the only marked decrease can be noticed for research culture, especially lack of opportunities to discuss research with peers. Supervision (82%) and Research skills (79%) remain the highest rated scales. Resources are also rated very highly (75% satisfied) including online resources.
• Respondents from the Humanities and Social Sciences Divisions tend to be less satisfied with their programme in general compared to other divisions, particularly in areas such as access to course-specific resources and training to develop their research and transferable skills.
• There was a varied level of awareness among respondents of the University’s Covid-19 provisions. The majority (69%) were aware of the additional extension and suspension rules and 60% were aware of the Scholarship Extension Fund. Far fewer were aware of wellbeing workshops and additional counselling sessions. The uptake of these provisions was generally low (between 13% and 2% of respondents) but the vast majority of those who experienced them found them helpful.
• Respondents’ wellbeing scores decreased slightly during the pandemic but so did the anxiety levels. Females were likely to display higher anxiety levels overall, but males were becoming more anxious the longer they were on the programme. Those residing in Oxford had lower wellbeing scores than those staying somewhere else in the UK or abroad.

All of this provided useful information to feed into our research, teaching and quality panels and help us to understand postgraduate experiences and enable the University to consider how we can look to improve programmes and the support received whilst studying at Oxford.

Student Barometer 

The Student Barometer ran from 17 November - 17 December 2022 and surveyed all taught undergraduate and postgraduate students. Postgraduate research students will be surveyed separately in 2023.

The survey enables the University to benchmark your feedback on the student experience from application to graduation, against those of 120 other universities.

The results and the comments you submitted are being analysed on a confidential and anonymous basis by a wide range of departments/faculties, colleges and central services across the collegiate University as we consider both the quantitative and qualitative feedback you provided. Your comments are very insightful and provide us an evaluation of your student experience so far and an impetus for change and improvements. A summary of the Student Barometer 2022 results for Oxford can be found here.

U-Flourish (Student Wellbeing)

The U-Flourish Student Wellbeing and Academic Success Survey is a university-wide study aiming to better understand the determinants of student wellbeing and academic success and evaluate the mental health support needs of students at Oxford.  It is a collaboration between the Department of Psychiatry, the University Student Welfare and Support Service, and Queen's University, Canada. The first part of the survey closed 18 November but students who took part will be invited to take part in a follow-up survey in Trinity term.

Other regular surveys

Departments and faculties carry out surveys on individual courses and use lecture questionnaires to gain feedback on the quality of lectures. The views of students are also represented by undergraduate and postgraduate Joint Consultative Committees (JCC).
Colleges collect feedback from students through tutorial evaluation questionnaires, college questionnaires, students and tutors/college advisers meetings, and annual meetings between students and their senior tutor and/or head of house.

Student feedback channel

In addition to formal surveys, the University and Oxford SU have been working together to get a better understanding of students’ studying and other experiences. An open feedback channel was launched in Trinity term 2020, enabling students to share their feedback about how learning and wider Oxford experiences had been via a short Oxford SU online form.

It offers students a chance to give examples of where things are going well, and make suggestions for improvements. The channel was launched again at the beginning of each term in 2020/21, and opened again on 31st January 2022. Students can fill it in more than once, and at any time. Students’ ideas and feedback are anonymised and communicated back to staff, supervisors and tutors across the University. You can view the summaries of student feedback from previous terms on the project reports page of the Centre for Teaching and Learning website.

Surveys for leavers

The Graduate Outcomes Survey

Graduate Outcomes is a national survey of graduates 15 months after they leave university; the survey asks all leavers about their employment, further study, or other activities. The information you provide helps to inform prospective students’ choices, develop higher education policy, and enables universities to make improvements for their students. Find out more on the Graduate Outcomes website.