Check out the recording of our last Webinar on how the BrightBirds App, our engagement concept, and Service have been successfully implemented within higher education to engage students within university life as well as academically.
Welcome everybody thank you for joining our webinar we really appreciate your time uh it’s so great to have you here we’ll probably leave it another 30 seconds or so to give uh any late comers a chance to join as well but please feel free to put in the chat if you’d like to
Say where you’re joining in from today whereabouts in the world you are we often get people joining from from all over the world so these webinars so it’s always great to see where you’re calling in from see some familiar familiar names already which is nice on so this webinar is all about uh
Datadriven Excellence unveiling the Brit Bird’s approach to University engagement really looking forward to getting into the conversation with some of our guest speakers and we’ll be exploring some tangible strategies for student engagement and success measurement as well uh we are recording the session just to let you know uh but we’ll share
A copy of the recording afterwards of course um if you have any questions as we go through please put them in the chat we’ll try to keep an eye on the the chat and try to include your questions as we go through the conversation at the
Same time you know it might be that the question is uh more relevant later on perhaps we’re going to address that very question later on in the slides for example or through the conversation so it might be that won’t answer your questions straight away but we’ll kind
Of wait and see uh but as I say please feel free to ask questions if there’s time which hopefully there will be we’ll leave some dedicated time at the end but typically yeah we try to cram a lot of a lot of stuff into one hour so it might
Be that we run out of time for questions and answers but uh if that is the case we’ll certainly make sure there’s an opportunity to field your questions uh later on via email or through another meeting of course okay well just to say a little bit about about uh what’s going to
Happen today we’re going to be talking a little bit about edim Mundo to start off with I’ll be going through some slides just to give a bit of a background on yeah the company and what we do we’ll be talking about engagement in general across higher education uh generation
Zed or Z and a sense of belonging within the higher education Community uh we’ll be talking about our solution bright Birds the bright Birds app and Service uh and we’ll be talking then around three main topics which we’ll hope y leave around 10 or 15 minutes for each
With our panel who I’ll introduce shortly uh so topic one is all about engaging University life from the student perspective uh thinking about sticky campus culture Community those sorts of things topic two will be all about engaging University life at this time from the University perspective and we’ll be thinking about also well
Sustainability and other Hot Topics such as Glo global citizenship and then topic three we’ll be thinking about the data collection and generation that’s possible POS and useful for the the higher education Community um not only through bright Birds uh but also in general and how those are are used as
Key metrics to kind of Drive Improvement in engagement and and other satisfaction metrics so there’s quite a lot to cover um perhaps before I go any further I might just quickly stop sharing and allow uh our um well distinguished colleagues here to introduce themselves perhaps we’ll start uh uh on the right
Here with um Stefan I was going to say ladies first but that’s okay hello my name is Steven plat or St on plot in Dutch uh I’m a business administration lecturer from H University of applied sciences which is in the east of the Netherlands uh I also
Have an own company in gamification and in motivational design um and so I do a lot of a lot of things but that’s that’s about it hi thanks Stan for joining us today I’m M and I have uh 12 years experience in education of which are five years in
Higher education at the University of applied sciences in ut and there I’ve worked on curriculum redesign and onboarding for First Years and um this summer I started at atundo as a educational expert and as head of bride persons um that’s why I’m here today okay my name is hoop h m I’m a
Former lecturer of the University of rdam chemical engineering and we were one of the first universities in the Netherlands who used the bride Birds to get a better engagement with our students so I’ll be happy to share all that information with you today sounds really great thanks the
Three of you for for joining today and well really looking forward to getting into the the conversation so I’ll go through a few slides now just to give a bit of background before we go any further a little bit about edimo well we’re really you know a company that’s
Completely focused on student engagement and Student Success um we’re very much present in uh in the UK of course working with about 60 institutions but we’re actually working you know all across the Netherlands uh Europe the Middle East uh well the whole the whole of the the the whole of the world in
Fact so we’re really uh an international company established 23 years ago so um yeah we’ve been around for quite a while with around about 40 employees and working with a quite a large number of institutions work worldwide we also have some really great experiences to to to
Pull upon from the corporate sector as well um having also sort of been involved with starting the market leader for employee onboarding as well which is some really great experiences we can pull back and feed back into the um higher education sector as well of course and as you can imagine a
Significant number of students benefiting for our from our products and solutions each year uh in the UK well some examp examples of UK institutions and Dutch institutions here that we’re working with um we’ll be referencing some of these uh institutions later in our conversations as well as we give some
Practical examples of the ways that the what that bright Birds is currently used to support student engagement uh across H so in terms of what we do as a company well we can really spread our product portfolio across these these four different lines um which are represented
By these colors on this slide here so on the blue on the left that’s our management simulations typically often used at Business Schools uh covering most business school subjects these are team based uh activities which are normally embedded across the curriculum across the semester within a dedicated module linked to the learning outcomes
And to the assessment approach within the module and the purpose of course is to drive engagement and boost employability skills as well as allowing the students to constructively uh apply the subject matter theory in a fun way so that’s the management simulations um in the green we have the edgy book
Something that we’ve launched uh more recently since 2017 and this we have uh really a textbook replacing platform where we’re trying to make the reading process as engaging and as fun as possible for students also layering some gamification techniques as well um we’ve engaged with some really top authors
There um hugely interactive and enjoyable platform and a wide range of titles so if that’s of Interest um please let us know it’s also not just subject specific titles but also some more generic titles like study skills employability skills personal development culture and communication and a range of other things as well so
Can be used anywhere within the university in yellow and perhaps most relevant to our conversation today we’ll be talking about bright Birds uh this is our engagement app our smartphone app which allows uh students to take part in challenges uh and uh well get a whole range of push notifications via their
Smartphone and this is all about boosting engagement uh motivating students trying to boost this sense of belonging again something we’ll be talking about a lot today and it’s really kind of meeting students where they are uh yeah giving giving the tools and technologies that students feel most comfortable
Using lastly in the purple we have Ed Stacks this is one of our most recently launched products and this is about kind of providing micro learnings uh so smaller chunks of content to students just in time learning uh flipping the classroom and we have a range of of
Topics that we can provide there as well also covering things like skills and personal development and a range of other things as well okay excuse me well what is engagement well perhaps that’s clear to everyone here as well but I just thought it would be helpful
To take this uh short sentence from the advanced H website at the extent to which students are motivated passionate and curious about their program of study H provide a community they live and work within and its immediate Environ so yeah so we’re all on the same page I thought
That was a really helpful kind of summary really about engagement we’ll be sharing these slides later as well by the way so there’s uh some tables here on the on the bottom here which are kind of going into more details on some of these things uh and we can unpick some
Of this later in the conversation as well so in terms of bright Birds well this is about about uh yeah activating forms of teaching and learning um so providing the learning in a more kind of contextualized way and uh making the the knowledge more applicable really to students more
Relevant and we got a little quote here from Rotterdam uh University of applied sciences so students like doing challenges and collecting points the gamification of course and this is why bright Birds works wonders for the motivation you can see it’s all about this motivation helping to to to kind of
Really provide this relevance to students kind of take part and um yeah get involved really uh Generation Z uh actually I I I’m think I’m taking your slides now Merl aren’t I so I’m gonna hand over to you I just realized you did brilliantly on the engagement
One okay so um that one thank you Le um Generation Z that’s the generation that actually is arriving at the moment at universities worldwide and it it covers about 32% of the global population which is a lot and we have to realize sometimes that this generation is really
Different from the ones that we grew up in because this one has never ever seen the world without internet and if you ask them uh what was a cassette recorder or something like that they just don’t know they don’t know a world where not everything was accessible in a minute
And uh this also means that they’re used in learnings in small bites and in a lot of different channels I mean if they want to know something they just Google it or put it into YouTube and they have their answers learning should be quick and it should be attractive for this
Generation and what they want most of all is entertainment uh the other part that we are going to talk about today is a sense of belonging if people start a new part or new chapter of their lives in which they go to university for example um
It’s new it might be scary and what they need most um at first at least is feeling at home they need to find their spot and their place at University they want to fit in with the population already there they want to fit in with the cultural uh aspects of the
University as well they want to be a member of the community and they want to feel supported by the university in their journey and if we look at some numbers um in the United Kingdom non-continuation rates from the 1 to the second year vary between 1.2 and 21.4% amongst higher education uh
Institutions so there are uh still an a significant number of students that quit after their first year or during their first year and developing a sense of belonging is a very crucial part of the decision forming process in which they decide to leave or not to leave the university when they experience
Difficulties and the more they feel at home and then more they feel this positive sense of belonging the less likely they are to leave then we’ll move on to our solution the product bright Birds a few fast fact it’s an application on the smartphone we picked this form of Comm communication
Because the smartphone almost is becoming an extension of uh Generation Z they go nowhere without it and they’re always on it and it’s their preferred forms of communication um it’s usable worldwide it works on every smartphone and uh it’s also uh made to work in quick burst so
Students receive a um notification that there is a challenge set for them and they can usually complete that challenge in about a minute maximum five minutes so they’re actually learning in very small bites they’re being engaged in small bites they can do that on individ indidual level or in groups or in
Classes so you can vary in which they work together and we have some standard packages as some standard topics that we provide uh one of them is the my University uh topic which we’re going to talk about more today um the My University topic focuses mostly on the
Student journey and what we call in Netherlands the onboarding part of university the part that makes students feel at home then we have uh some sets for skills and personal developments and also for global citizenship that covers prob mostly about stgs or feeling uh at home in the world what’s their what’s
Your place in the world what you can what can you actually uh do to make it a better world and if you want something else we also have the custom project part where you can just handles your project and we’ll gamify it in this application
Um why do we use bright Birds uh well there are a few reasons for that it has uh aspects of gamification so we use different types of challenges we can use polls or video challenge or an open question um works with a scoreboard in voting so there’s a a part in there that
Students recognize actually from social media they can post something and people can vote on for instance the best study tip um we work with bad which is uh motivational because they actually can compete and they can reach certain levels uh while they’re developing skills or knowledge and you can also use
The badges for microc credentials there’s of course a part of data generation in there um that students don’t feel like it’s a survey I mean it’s a challenge for them and we get data so they fill in a poll or make a multiple choice quiz and then we on
The other hand on the tutor dashboard can see what happened and how engaged they were and what they were thinking um if we move a bit to the right in the Green Arrow Zone we have the motivational part um they can actually see their own progress towards reaching
A certain badge or a certain reward and um the Loyalty part is that they play together and they can do challenges to get to know each other and this way we also Foster the sense of community whilst engaging students and all these factors uh lead to more student engagement and more Student Success
This is an example of what a challenge looks like on a smartphone and if you yeah there it goes there are different steps uh in doing a challenge so you get a notification and then step by step you can finish the challenge and if you have finished it the points will be rewarded
To you this is the other part this is the Tor dashboard and in this dashboard you can actually see the data as a lecturer or a Dean or um what your function may be and uh we use the dashboard to monitor the progress and usage of the
App uh we can also look at the rankings or show the rankings to the group and uh there’s also an overview in there of what challenges are still to come yeah so hopefully that’s useful it’s to you know give a sense of what we’re you know the context of what we’re
Going to be talking about today is that is that the last slide for now Merl or was there one more what’s the last one yeah okay okay great well yeah really helpful and I think perhaps it’s also useful just to kind of say that in the context again of of the conversation we’re
Having today that we’ll be referencing the NSS uh a lot today and also pest as well so NSS being uh well these are very UK uh Centric terms of course so the national student survey and also the postgraduate taught experience student uh surve survey as well and yeah well
Whilst these are really important to most UK providers there will be similar things of course in in other countries as well and um perhaps important also to kind of mention that these yeah sector-wide kind of surveys they only really capture the information and feedback from students who make it
To the end of their uh their studies essentially so those students who may leave early they they that that doesn’t capture their feedback of course and it could be argued that perhaps those students who are you know dropping out or leaving for whatever reason are you know that’s that’s arguably even more
Important to capture that data as well so yeah we’ll be referencing NSS today but perhaps it’s kind of useful to think of it more as just you know satisfaction surveys in general really okay well straight into the first topic then I think uh perhaps let’s just
Say uh yeah we’re going to be talking maybe allowing 10 minutes or maybe 15 for yeah thinking about the student perspective of engaging University life so perhaps a question to H uh to start with um but maybe all of you as well uh what about some some specific examples of successfully engaging
Students in university life and I suppose the impact of that on the student experience as well yeah well thanks for putting me on the spot L on um no worries one of the uh in particular setting at the chemical engineering department within our University uh you get a particular set of students uh
Which very much are in science math you know eight level a level students we always been very good at a high school level and then they come to University where it’s a different environment a more formal setting if you want so one of the things we want to do is break the
Formal distance between lecturers and students so we used the bride Birds app for instance in induction period um to the they had a scavenger hunt uh where we used the app to to to lead students around the building and then hidden in in certain places where
This where the Tutors or lectures with a QR code which they had to uh find and scan and by doing so they in an informal way we met with the students and the students met with us and it’s just breaking that formal distance between the two
Groups that was one example of I believe u closing up on the social distance between the students and the lectures and hands you know bringing more bonding to to the to the two groups and we continue that throughout the program for instance I I was looking at my notes
Yesterday in preparation to today’s meeting and you know around Christmas period you have this ugly sweater competition where people have to wear this this weird uh Christmas sweater and you know we had a video or photo challenge where students were to look for the tutes or the lecturers and and
Make a picture of them together you know happily sharing the the wor or the ugly sweater um again a low barrier entry to getting into the lecturers community if you want for students and building that bond which you need to get that engagement going so these were two
Typical examples where we built on building that social connect between the lecturers and the students just to give you an example on your question yeah sounds good sounds good and um what about uh yeah also around kind of linking it back to the kind of academic side as well because I think
You’re talking a lot there about um yeah helping students kind of feel that bond with the the University or that connection with the university but what about how it links back to the academic part as well yeah yeah um well you know chemical engineering you do a lot of lab work and
That formally that’s a very formal process because of safety for instance and it’s very much from the lecturer to the students you know with process and procedures and you follow the procedures and then you get your results but we want flip the classroom that but still
Being safe so we did things like um very early on we sent them into the lab with a challenge to find particular lab equipment make a picture of that and go and find on Google or some other um uh search engine what the purpose of that equipment was how it functions and
Report that back to us so in this way the students was proactively looking for information rather than us sending that to them which fits very much Generation Z and as you can see I’m not the youngest so my diff my distance to that Generation Z is really large so for me
It helped me to talk to them if you want in a way which fits them best with the with the tool which fits them best as well and yet we obtained the objective namely for them to understand the functionality of particular equipment in the lab
Um another example is uh sort of also in the flip the classroom mentality for them to come you know the subjects which we deal with are quite uh challenging I would argue even for very good students it’s it’s it’s quite challenging from an academic perspective so as we knew this was the
Thing they were facing we want to make them bond with us while we try to to explain to them the difficulty of the subject we asked them to come prepared and we used the bride Birds app to to to to make them to to engage them prior to
The lesson fin but by asking them to come prepared and ask two or three questions about the matters which they read about and couldn’t understand so we as lectures knew prior to giving the lessons to them where the difficulties were we could address them in Greater length and a greater depth
By doing so you help the students and then later on we ask them did it you know are you happy with the lesson and and did it fulfill your needs and met needs and you keep the communication going which is very important particular around difficult subject but also with
Large communities of students so in that way with the social with the academic we we start building that Bond and the the bride birds have really created that that that Tool uh to make that bound go well yeah well really really helpful H yeah thanks for the for the examples and
And Merill perhaps to to you like in terms of coming back to the the more social aspects then of uh of what’s important to universities and thinking about sort of trying to foster a more vibrant kind of um yeah culture within the university really what would you say
Are specifically some of the examples which bright birds can be used to kind of address those unique unique needs of students as well well we’re talking unique needs we live in a world where people want to be accepted and want to have the space to be themselves without
Having to ask for it they want to feel like they belong so we for instance did for the University of applied sciences in ut was that they did have gender neutral toilets but um they were not on every floor so you had to know which
Floor you needed to go uh so we made a challenge uh where they were sent to find the gender new to toilet so it was kind of a playful way to actually let them know you’re safe here we have this space for you and here it is so they
Didn’t need to look it up on the University website or find it by asking a lecturer they could just find it themselves in a fun way where everyone was the same everyone wanted to get those points and get the inclusivity badge so they all went there and the
Same was for the um well the the silent SL prayer room we have somewhere on campus and we also made a challenge for that one and this way we wanted to let them know that they were seen and or were safe as well um so that’s a big
Part of inclusivity and uh feeling at home also the sense of belonging which you Foster in this case as well and um if we’re talking about culture a little bit more um then we for instance could focus a bit more on the international students for instance the University of
Sford the business school uh the international business school has a program prior to students arriving in Manchester where they want to help them fuel cultur at home so they want to focus on what are the differences what might be the same what can you expect when you come here and they have
Developed a very nice workbook for them to do prior to arriving but it’s sometimes quite hard to motivate students to do something in a workbook up front uh so we applied gamification to that part as well by using bright Birds by giving them little push messages to ask them hey have you seen
This question have you filled out this part do you feel like you’re prepared for the cultural transition and uh by using this uh well intermediate right which is kind of an intermediate between arriving at uh campus and doing the workbook up front we saw that people or
Students in this case uh made the students actually finished up the workbook more often than they used to so in this way you can also um make sure the students are culturally prepared okay and um yeah well thinking about then so our participants that have
Joined us today uh if if any of these participants are looking for some kind of practical and tangible ways to adopt you know to help their institutions adopt more Innovative practices um what would you say would be like some key considerations or or best practices to think about based on well
The experiences that we all have in this room of working with universities well I think we can all answer this question but maybe it might be nice to let Stefan get a word in as well I was going to say a lecture holding his mouth for so long that that was quite hard
Yeah just from my perspective just to to give it a bit bit bit of context six years ago I was at the at the base of this whole well product or or idea about game adding gamification to a a curriculum or to a certain project um
And that was because I was I was a coordinating six programs or the first year of six programs and I wanted to make it more fun and challenging and effective um and especially on the effective because we didn’t talk a lot about data and data analysis uh um up to
This point uh but I didn’t have any data to to to steer during the year right so uh the only thing that happened was after a year uh students fill in some sort of survey uh and then we can only work as I say Curative right instead of
Preventive so I wanted to be on the on the steering wheel I wanted to uh be able to co coordinate with real life data um and having having that said I wanted to at the other end make make the first year more fun challenging and effective for students and also for us
As a university so combining these two created basically what we are talking about uh today is really challenging students throughout their first year throughout the process uh which gives us uh valuable data and and that we can use to actually improve the curriculum during the year instead of afterwards
When it’s too late so that’s more or less the challenge I had because we have a lot of dropouts in the Netherlands um uh the curriculum was not really designed for Generation Z yet or Z what is it Z or z z either is fine so um so
We had a lot of what I said dropouts um and um so we try to really uh look at what what makes these students drop out and what can we learn from them and that’s an important aspect also within within a first or second year is that students disappear but then also again
Afterwards they are being asked why did you leave or what was not okay about your study program um and but then it’s too late so we want to address all these facts um throughout this first well let’s say 100 days of first year which is a very important um period in the
Student um life cycle I would say or in the student Journey um so and and I have a lot of examples of course of how we did this um we we included um um all the activities in a certain calendar for them so all the let’s say we had an
International teaching or an international week which normally students wouldn’t visit that in in that much or great numbers uh so now using the Bri birge um app and program as a a sort of gamification uh umbrella I would say I’m not sure if that’s the right sentence but we use it
As an umbrella over all kinds of loose activities that are happening throughout the year and in the student Journey uh because most of the time what I see at least from a Dutch perspective um uh there is an induction period there is a uh International week there are all kinds of activities but
It’s all they are all loose activities and with this with this program we try to to to to link all this together in one program and then you get valuable data and you can well play with it as a as a as a tutor or as a coordinator
That’s that’s very fun so coming back to and then I will shut up coming back to the uh to this International week normally we would get like 50 students in uh which is a bit well it is an event and um then I put it into a challenge
That they had to visit this International teaching week for this International week and they had to find a QR I believe uh somewhere in this um event uh and it turned out uh that there were 200 students that year two 200 and even people got mad at me because they
Wanted to have a warning in advance that there were so many students showing up which is of course a good success but that’s that’s uh well and and so there’s lots of examples in which you can you which you can put in this in this program to uh actually yeah engage the
Students and use the data also to to make your program better yeah okay well thanks Stefan and I’m sure there’s quite a lot more to say on this as well but um at the same time yeah given the time I’m Keen to move on to our next topic as
Well so really useful already to hear about like some of the examples from a student perspective but now we’re going to kind of flip it over to thinking about the same sorts of things but from the University perspective so given that in the context of like yeah fostering a
Sense of belonging within a university and um yeah also like how a university kind of defines what it is to be a student at a particular University um it’s it’s it’s it’s challenging right this there’s a certain kind of set of values I think which each University tries to uphold and tries to
Instill within their students but like yeah how do universities successfully translate that um yeah who wants to take that one well sure it’s uh it’s quite hard actually for University to engage students in participating in the University culture because there’s a lot of stuff that’s that’s already coming
Towards them when they’re starting a new University life and what we see a lot is that universities have a very nice website in which they actually promote certain cultural aspects of university life sometimes there are activities as well or groups that students can join but you really wanted to sync in with
The entire student body so what you can do actually is make some challenges for the cultural aspect for instance the University of sford is very uh much an advocate for sustainability and wants it to be embedded in university life so you put a strain of challenges in the bright
Bird system talking about sustainability and what it is for them what they can do as a student and also in the critical note what they see self for doing uh for sustainable self eff because sometimes um when you look at sustainability from the University’s perspective you see different things than when students look
At it and you actually want students and University to see the same so brightwoods can actually help bringing those perspectives towards each other as well okay all right maybe I can add we have a um a program for student well-being uh at the Han University um
Which which which is uh well it’s a well-being Circle it has six dimensions but anyways that’s that’s a that’s a activity that that that that that is set out by the board right uh but now we have also the opportunity to test if students uh also feel the same about
Their well-being because most of the times we are talking about students or over students but we don’t really um uh get get them involved in this press so we want to give them um more saying in in in in how we um um manage their program basically um so we asked
Students about this well-being wheel which of these aspects find they find most important and I believe it was flexibility and health which are are the two key issues for them to stay to stay well right so um and we had about 800 students uh filling this out and and
Don’t think about a big survey because they don’t fill out big surface but just a small challenge or a poll in which they State okay I really think this is the most important important aspect of student well-being and so we can uh act upon that and put some more efforts and
And resources towards these two um um dimensions of of student well-being and and leave the others a bit out which I’m not saying that they’re not important but according to the students they’re less important right and I think what you did there is really important because you actually gave the students a
Visible vote in what was going to happen and usually when we send out surveys we forget the last parts we already so happy that like 20% of the student body filled out a survey and then we go run with the survey but students don’t know or not always know what happens with the
Results and because they don’t know what happens they get less and less inclined over the years to fill out surveys for us and then you actually lose some footage with them because they think their opinion doesn’t really matter and we’re really running towards we want to
Help you we want to listen but there’s kind of a miscommunication or a communication Gap and if you actually do it in a small way which are inclined to fill out and you have an immediate feedback response and you show students that you did something with what they
Said then they will get more invested in the university and in their culture as well they want to participate and they want to be feel to be seen and heard yeah and as I said before um uh you you you we are using plan do check act Cycles I mean the Improvement Cycles
Right to to to steer the program to be able to manage these programs um and and you get you get real life data back from the students so again you can as a university it’s very um nice that you have the opportunity to to to act upon this immediately instead of waiting for
A year and and students now also see the results of this this action straight away instead of uh just handing in a survey and then the effects of this survey or the outcomes are only for students who come after them right so or who are in the later year I think that’s
You did actually too with your curriculum yeah we had um yeah we had a challenge if you can imagine Leon um you know chemical engineering is a hard subject in general and we used the old uh teaching methods who didn’t fit well with the new generation so we we went to
This journey we as lecturers basically and used the data which we collected with briers over a period of three years and understand what was motivating and not motivating what work what didn’t work and we amended our curriculum actually to the to the needs of the students so we redesigned our total
Curriculum uh and now it’s running and even now in this new format we still keep the bride B app going to monitor whether it still fits the Generation Z or the Next Generation beyond that and make sure that we adapt our program without losing track of what we want to
Fulfill in bringing the professional chemical engineer to the industry so the academic part is maintained but it is presented in a different way and is adapted getting the info from the bride Bird app and just like uh St said it’s really short cycle so you can immediately once you done a particular
Subject you can close the circle by understanding how they went and then amend your program accordingly uh so it it means that the teacher then iMed has the tools to to work on on modifying the program become it more effective efficient yeah and yeah if I may Dell on you know I’m a
Teacher so I’m allowed to talk longer than expected but you know we saw the results also you mentioned the national student survey in the in the UK we have similar things in the Netherlands in fact every year in its four years program the students are asked to submit
To survey and you know we had a threeyear involvement and over that threee we saw the grading which we got from our students going up significantly um which is a reflection of what they experienc over the years and not only that but also the partici grade of the students participating in
That survey uh went to Almost 100% which is another indirect sign if you want of the effectiveness of in involving them into the university life and involving them actually in the curriculum to some extent and if I may point out um why you would need an app or this app to do this
That’s actually because when I was teaching at an higher education in higher education and you would ask students what do you need for me what can I help you with the answer was mostly nah I’m fine or it was complete silence it’s sometimes really hard to overcome the generation gap and my
Generation is slightly younger than but uh it’s really hard actually to talk to them in a way that they feel engaged and they feel safe to share with you uh their needs and their wants and uh if you do it in a survey students probably don’t even read their email at least in
The Netherlands they don’t so they don’t even know they have a survey there and if they find the survey and it takes longer than five minutes they go like nah that’s too much trouble so that’s actually where the app comes in because it’s really lowkey it’s their preferred
Method of uh communication and they feel rewarded because they can get points for a simple survey question of what of the six parts of the wheel would you want us to focus more on are what works for you in our curriculum ABC or D so it’s really really lowkey it has the
Gamification shell that Stan already talked about and I think this um this way of generating data really fills the gap between talking to the students and sending out an Anonymous survey I think yeah go ahead yeah what I was just going to say think some some observations basically because I think that’s been
Some really insightful uh words from all of you there and it it was making me think about you know a lot of universities are trying to really push this idea of you know students as co-creators or or students as partners within the within the The Learning Journey or the university kind of
Journey and in order to to kind of truly be able to to claim that you know you you have to exactly as you’ve outlined you know it’s it’s not just about waiting until the end and getting data in order to you know apply for future students coming in in the following
Years it’s it’s about getting that as early as possible and I think um Stef on your examples there were really helpful like actually yeah let’s get that information as early as possible how is it going in order that we can actually make tangible kind of adjustments to
Things if necessary to be able to kind of bring things back on track maybe add to that because um um if you look at a dashboard and probably May will show it later on you can also uh you can also see how students or how certain classes or groups within your uh
Program are uh um are doing so how are they doing are they active are they interactive uh how how do they value their program but also we ask questions like do you ever think about quitting quitting the program right and that is an essential thing also within the
Student Journeys that you make as M said you want to address that uh or those questions um early in the process instead of too late because then you’re too late um and you want to do this um with a low barrier right so you want to
Do and that’s why we make it a bit more fun so for students it’s fun to to answer difficult questions but it gives you a lot of data which you can used to to talk to a certain um class because uh well we had like 28 groups of 30
Students for instance so we could monitor really well how these classes were doing um um and also in a ranking so the the the the classes that were were behind we actually went there I asked the teachers or the how do you call them the the study counselors the
Yeah personal development teach well yeah so to to to focus on these these these these aspects uh for instance if we uh we asked them how would you rate your motivation for this program well there were classes that scored very high but there were also classes that that
Scored very low and of course that’s who who you want to talk to right at that point not wait yeah yeah yeah yeah well no absolutely well really insightful and I think also just to kind of add from my perspective as well that yeah this kind
Of I think was also teased out from what you were saying as well that if we are going to have some some meaning F kind of iterative improvements made as as a result of the feedback that we get we also have to be confident that that feedback is representative of the uh the
Student body and and and so if we only have a very small proportion of people of students submitting these survey responses then well that’s not particularly helpful either so we we really need to kind of up that and and one interesting thing I spotted was that
I think the I read somewhere that the sector average for in the UK for the P test results the postgraduate T experience survey the sector average is only 21% in terms of survey you number of people responding to those surveys so you know clearly there’s big work that
We need to do to try to meet students where they are in order to make them feel like they have a voice and that they should you know complete these these satisfaction surveys um moving on a little bit because again we’re we’re kind of trying to keep to time here but
A little bit but just perhaps um to you Merill thinking about again that this kind of same question I I posed was thinking about the student perspective but also now in terms of the University perspective as well we we’ve talked a lot about the social Parts again you
Know the the university culture uh the identity of an institution but what about kind of balancing that back with again the academic kind of the academic Excellence I suppose of the University really yeah I think it’s really important to realize that those two parts are not exclusive I
Mean they are more like counterweights when students feel at home and they feel like they’re part of the university and the university culture then their grades will go up we actually saw some results from research papers in the Netherlands on that that students who feel at home
Who have a nice uh student Journey or an induction period they’re more likely to actually uh keep good grades and finish their program on time so uh by making sure students engage with each other with the staff with the university culture actually Prime them for better results and faster
Finish um of course you can also make a lot of different academic challenges in which you can prepare them for upcoming tests or for particular topics I mean for the university in Salford we actually wrote A Few challenges uh that are coming up right before the testing
Week and we asked them about what’s your best study tip when are you starting to study for the tests have you already started why not and um in hindsight we actually asked them also a bit about the level of the test was it expected or was
It harder than you expected did it fit the program so you get a lot of valuable feedback in that way as well yeah maybe to add one of the let’s say student Junior on boarding goals is academic so so you have a social social goal academic goal and a practical goal
Um and practical goal meaning uh where to go to when you want to go to the Library Etc but looking from the academic perspective we also ask them in advance okay what kind of profession would you like to take up after you finish this school do you know which or
What will be your favorite course when you look at the second year of the program right so you already look ahead in your studies instead of uh doing that only after summer uh 20 minutes before class or probably within the first lecture after summer right you know how
It goes so we try to actively challenge them also to look look be beyond the point where they are at that moment but look look further than that in into their program as well um yeah yeah and there’s also the way of flipping the classroom for the
University of applied sciences in ut we actually developed some challenges about programmatic assessment and feedback literacy where we asked students to read a small article or watch a small YouTube video and there was a short quiz afterwards so make sure they actually read it or watched it and then during
The lecture time the lecturer would go like okay we’ve seen this now we will can start with this topic what do we think did you’re already possessed with big literacy or are you starting out so you could use it as a warming activity so to speak in front of the lecture as
Well and this also relates back to we we I think edimo launched a Blog recently about the sticky campus isn’t it the sticky campus being uh the idea I think that uh the the more you can bring students onto campus and make them stay and make them want to stay uh for you
Know around all of the social things and everything else that’s going on actually the more they’re on campus the more likely they they are then to kind of engage more with their studies and do well in their studies as well so um this this also links quite nicely back to the
Sticky campus as well isn’t it well yeah but more in generally or in general uh as a as a university you want to use all your resources as effective and efficient as possible right so that’s that’s the buildings that your that your school uh which is often empty in our in
Our case um so you can use that more effectively and efficiently um um and that that is also for classroom settings where sometimes teachers are only there in front of 10 10 students that’s not effective so so from from that purpose looking at using your resources wisely I
Think there is a lot to be gained in uh in in University world and and the sticky Compass is one example of that where you use your resources as being the grounds more more than only for uh lecturing okay well um onto our final topic about data Generation Um and we
Might have to cut this this topic a little bit shorter because we’re already yeah just just under 10 minutes now until the top of the hour um by the way to all our participants if you have any questions based on what’s been discussed already please feel free to start
Putting those questions into the chat now and then that way we can try to make sure we leave enough time to address some of those questions um but equally yeah if you want to follow up afterwards with questions as well we’ll put some contact details up I think on the last
Slide so that’s fine of course but yeah in terms of data Generation Um so to our to our speakers today like what will the bright Birds app allow you to do in terms of um yeah getting meaningful data that you can use to actively measure and track student engagement throughout
Their their academic Journey yeah well it can do a lot actually but usually with the universities we have some kind of consultation session where we actually asked them besides the generic uh student Journey goals like academic social and operational what would you like what is one of your key points um
For instance it can be sustainability it can be the sticky campus part it can be anything else and then we develop challenges based on what the goal of the university is and what kind of data the university wants to generate one of the goals could also be to improve the data
For the pts or the NSS uh and then we can take some questions from the NSS or the pts and put those in a gamified shell in bribris as well so universities can actually see before students end their program what they would possibly score later on and maybe even have time
To rectify that so the data that you want to get out of brib birds that’s really that we’re really able to personalize that for each individual University yeah because reminds me of you you said an app because there is of course a very uh practical let’s say
Tutor dashboard in which all this data is available so it’s I prefer to mention it as being a concept right we use it in our school as a as a concept to get more uh fun and engagement engaging students uh so which is an app and a dashboard
And you have to have really good content because gamification is nice but but but you have to have the content right first and the rest comes after right so what you said if you look at an NSS result in which communication scores very low on
Your side uh then you could you could um design some challenges for students that are about this communication and um and so then you treat them as a partner in student as a partner and you get feedback and you are able to improve this communication uh throughout their well first second
Third year as an iterative process that’s a hard word my bad yeah yeah yeah yeah because that’s actually what students really like they when they say something they want to make sure that they’re heard they want to be told if something happens and if something happens they want to have it confirmed
That it was actually what they needed or what they wanted and breit Bri has an immediate response function so when students fill out a poll or a question you can immediately see the results in the dashboard and then we have a message function which you can actually send
Them an update from hey we’ve seen you answered this and this we’re going to work on it and we’ll keep you updated um so it’s really lowkey as well for the University part and uh because the students get that notification with a small piece of text they’re more
Inclined it to read it than a big email with an written update that’s usually less effective Okay so yeah so so we’ve got uh you know one thing is wanting to boost first of all you know the the the engagement with a survey right so boosting the number of
Responses that we get and then second thing is hopefully that the data we get will demonstrate that the students are more engaged with the university life and with their studies and then the last piece is that you know using that data you know what are we going to do with
That data how are we going to let that inform our future Direction and developments across the university for Student Success strategies and so forth so I suppose on that note like what specific examples or steps actionable steps can students take uh can universities take to yeah use that data
To yeah well to provide insights but also then yeah to inform their their developments well it depends also on the University structure I mean if a lecturer notices it is it’s different than when a dean notices the results so you have to probably bring it higher up
The ladder as well and uh at least in the Netherlands it usually goes like this then you find some result where you want to work on and then you form an action group and we have experienced that action groups usually work best when it’s not just lecturers or staff
Participating but also some students so you try to get the entire stakeholders in there um and then try to improve on what’s necessary yeah I think it’s it’s it’s it’s all about um I think three months ago we did some sort of um question where where students really wanted to
Have even more uh they wanted to have even more bigger saying in how the program is uh constructed of course that’s maybe a bit of a Dutch cultural thing is that our students are very direct and want to be on the same level
As as as the rest as us uh but you know if they are motivated you want to get them in and you want to get them on board and as I said looking at the data you could you can you can use it proactively instead of reactive uh and
Building uh improvements throughout the year so and there is a lot of examples if you want to hear some some more uh I’ll be happy to share them but they’re really on okay items that that also are in an NSS or in a survey around communication or about the program about
The uh even about the scheduling of their classes right all these kinds of things come back and sometimes it’s quite easily fixable and you don’t need a longterm group working on it we for instance had at some point a problem with classrooms that they had five
Minutes to swap and then they had to move three buildings over and that’s just not possible but sometimes these technical errors occur and if students well actually tell you about it or share their concerns you can quite easily act on it well I’m sure there’s a lot more
To say about this and uh yeah well I’m sure plenty more examples Stefan as well so perhaps that’s for another webinar or something else at a later date but for now given the time we’ve got just a few minutes left uh Merill did you want to say something about these slide this
Slide here about the the NSS well it was mostly an example we took a look at the NSS results of last year and we picked some themes out of there uh which we think might be actually a nice fit for some challenges in bright Birds uh and
Also some themes that had a big discrepancy from The Benchmark towards the university that scored the lowest it’s not that nice to say but sometimes that happens so we saw it for instance with the assessment part and the feedback part that The Benchmark is really nice actually it’s a 77.8 but the
Biggest difference is minus 27.7% so that’s quite a lot um so you could add quite easily some challenges in bright Birds to boost uh the uptake on the assessment and feedback part in which you ready gather some data and maybe change some structures around to make
Sure that after a few years you score way better and the same goes for the academic support or the learning resources we used to get a lot of negative feedback in our form of the NSS for the uh University of of applied sciences in ut because there were not
Enough study spots in the library so that takes a while to change but it is possible and it’s always nice if you know that after a few months instead of after four years um so these were kind of examples for which parts you could boost your NSS score by using break
Birds yeah okay well looking forward going into that in a bit more detail with you another time then um did you want to say something I think Stefan about uh this onboarding journey or do we think we we don’t have time for that up to you well for now just just really
Brief is that what I said before is that in most cases the onboarding process is made up by incidental uh uh items or program items right and everybody um um has a different responsibility with um within each of these items so what we try to do is is
And shell is the right word not an umbrella my my bad but so they shell over the over we knew what you meant over the complete process meaning so you look at it from when the student signs up for your program until the first uh the end of the first 100 days that’s
That’s one program that you have to align and that’s what we do and that that’s what this model is about which in each phase you have different goals which you work on but that’s more like a theoretical thing uh in the end you can see um that that the offboard E let’s
Say the students that leave are also very valuable in this process for Gathering feedback and and knowing why they drop out so that’s a that’s a nice add on to this model instead of other models okay okay and um I think basically uh that’s that’s the end of the the webinar
We’re we’re right on the top of the hour so we we’re exactly an hour in so we we’re really conscious that everyone’s given up their time today so we don’t want to keep anyone longer I’m sure you all have busy schedules so thanks so much to all our participants for joining
Today and well thanks so much to our three guest speakers as well ho Maron and Stefan it’s been great talking to you about this and uh shame I couldn’t join you in the room there it’s it’s nice to have all three of you together me joining in from from Bristol here
It’s yeah it’s a shame I couldn’t have join you today as well in in the office but um really good to talk to you and I think you know there’s clearly so many more examples uh so much you know expertise here in the room in the room
About uh yeah all different ways that bright birds can be used to improve engagement so I’m sure we’ll probably have enough to say to have a whole other webinar in a month or so or a couple of months um but again to all our webinar uh attendees yeah thanks so much for
Joining if you have any more questions please feel free to email us uh you can get in touch uh with us by the details on this slide that we’re sharing right now or you can contact Merill directly on that phone number as well um yeah that’s it webinar over but thanks so
Much uh for joining the three of you really interesting hosting Le thank you yeah no worries glad to really it’s been really really interesting and uh yeah well back on with uh with the rest of the work isn’t it but uh yes all right have a nice day thank you
Bye bye bye bye thank you bye bye bye