Like all higher education providers in the UK, the QAA Quality Code states we must meet certain Core Practices for Student Engagement that the QAA have set out within their Expectation for this area. See How we do things for our approach in meeting these.
The required Core Practice for Student Engagement is:
Core Practice: Quality
- The provider actively engages students, individually and collectively, in the quality of their educational experience.
- In practice, this means that effective, meaningful and inclusive student engagement requires continuous effort to ensure the development of new and innovative approaches.
- Students can engage individually in their learning and in quality processes, which might involve working in partnership with individual staff, or groups of staff and other students. However, individual student feedback is not a substitute for formal structures of collective student representation.
- Collective student engagement involves students considering, deliberating and developing informed views, independent from the provider, which are representative of the wider student body. Collective engagement will happen primarily through the student representative structures such as course/class/faculty representatives, and where they exist through the students’ representative body (such as the students’ union, association or guild).
Common Practice for Quality:
The QAA Quality Code also has a Common Practice that whilst not mandatory for us to follow, we still feel this is relevant to us and that we can show we do it. It is:
- The provider engages students individually and collectively in the development, assurance and enhancement of the quality of their educational experience.
- In practice, this means that it is widely accepted throughout the sector that the views of all students, both individually and collectively, should inform activities undertaken by providers. This should, in turn, inform quality processes and practice with the purpose of ongoing improvement of the student experience, for current and future cohorts.