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HIGHER EDUCATION | SPECIAL REPORT | 29


SHOULD STUDENTS BE IN CHARGE OF TECHNOLOGY?


Students at the University of Mary Washington in the US have been paying a special technology fee for more than 10 years – and they’ve been actively consulted on how that money is spent. Now that HE income in the UK is tied so closely to fees, and fee income to student satisfaction, Nicola Yeeles asks: should students be in charge of their university’s tech?


satisfi ed. But there’s clearly far more to a learner’s satisfaction with technology than their ability to access a computer.


Changing the language: from customers to creators In the UK, universities have long been consulting their students on strategies for improving their IT off er through surveys and focus groups. But across education, there’s been a change in recent years. Terms like ‘co-creator,’ ‘designer’ and ‘partner’ have replaced the old language of ‘customer’. Institutions have moved from seeing the student as a user to be listened to, to a partner in technology and organisational design. For the second year running,


I


t’s that time again. Across the country, students are adding their voices to the National


Student Survey. While certainly not the only questionnaire they’ll complete this academic year, it is without doubt one of the most infl uential. The scores they give their university or college are available online for prospective students to scrutinise, and will form part of each institution’s key information sets. Technology is explicitly


mentioned just once in the survey – students comment on how happy they were that they’ve been “able to access general IT resources when needed”. In 2013, 87% of them were


UK education’s technology charity, Jisc, is organising a competition inviting students to come up with innovative solutions to their everyday challenges, then mentoring them through the process from design to roll-out. Universities like Manchester and Oxford Brookes now run app-creating contests, while entrants for open competitions like Google’s summer of code are often students or new start-ups.


Today’s students, tomorrow’s managers Andy McGregor, deputy chief innovation offi cer at Jisc, said: “When you ask students what technology they want to see in their institutions, it’s rarely what you expect.” During the 2013 competition,


many teams came up with ‘magic bullets’ to improve their learning experiences, such as a web app to help visualise progress through the academic year. But some also voiced surprising concerns, including how to virtualise noticeboards, and improve in-classroom lecture technology – things that the sector might have thought they’d already


“When you ask students what technology they want to see in their institutions, it’s rarely what you expect” Andy McGregor


got right. Jisc programme manager Paul Bailey explained: “Students are anticipating future concerns. They’re already four or fi ve years ahead – using models like gamifi cation, or the concept of the virtual assistant.” At the University of Greenwich


a team of students have been developing their own virtual learning environment. TheStudentVLE.com is a social and academic hub encouraging peer- to-peer learning via a PC, mobile or tablet. Some of the ventures like Call for Participants, a crowd-sourced platform to help researchers fi nd volunteers, are already successfully operating independently. The University of Exeter’s student


vice president for academic aff airs, Alex Louch, believes that young people are more successful at identifying what they need because they are digital natives. He explained: “Current students have grown up alongside web-based technology; they live with it on a daily basis, and they know what is required from higher education providers.”


A strategic approach to collaboration In many universities, the concept of a student as a co-creator links


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