What do students actually need? We asked before we answered.

Some of the biggest change in teaching, learning and the student experience is happening below the surface; in how decisions get made in the first place, long before any projects take shape. 

Across the University, teams are adopting a human-centred design approach: understanding the needs, experiences and challenges of students and colleagues before building any solution. It's already reshaping how we support students, and it sits at the heart of what Manchester 2035 asks of us. 

Starting with the problem, not the answer 

"In higher education, we tend to start with an answer. We know the change we want to make, and we think about how we roll that out," explains Sarah Dyer, Associate Vice President for Teaching Excellence and Innovation. "Human-centred design asks us to start in a different place. It asks us to really explore the problem, from the perspectives of the people who are impacted by it. When we do that, we often realise the problem is different from the one we thought it was." 

That principle runs through the Manchester 2035 Delivery Handbook, which Sarah calls "an amazing invitation to us as educators." It's also behind the discovery grants which will provide funding to academics, to explore problems with their own students using simple tools such as empathy maps and journey maps. "It's an easy way in," Sarah says. "Academics can start experimenting with this approach in their own practice and see if it works for them." The grant funding call will open in September. 

Listening before building: the Needs Hub 

You can see the same thinking in how the University is approaching AI. "When we're thinking about something like AI, it creates a huge kind of opportunity, some new obligations, and some new challenges in education," says Sarah. Rather than assuming what academics and professional services colleagues needed to teach and support students, the team began by listening. "We wanted to not make assumptions about what their needs were." 

Conversations with educators from every Faculty, some experts, some encountering AI for the first time and some struggling with it, led to the creation of the Needs Hub. "It's visible to everyone in the institution," Sarah explains, "so everyone can see what needs we're working on, what we've prioritised in conversation with our community, and how we're seeking to address those. They can give us feedback, they can see what's coming, and they can understand why we're prioritising the things we're prioritising." 

"If we apply a human-centred design lens, we start with what people need," says Iria Lopez, Human-centred Design Consultant. "We identify the needs academics, professional services and students have, and we look at what support already exists to respond to them." There's a third principle behind the Hub too: test and learn. "We test whether people understand the value of the support that exists, and whether they know how to engage with it." 

Designed by the people who use it 

That approach is visible in the Hub's first tools. An AI student communications tool, which helps academics set out their expectations around AI use in assessment, has been shaped by the people who'll actually use it. "The purpose isn't to replace academic judgement," says Antonia Acanfora, Teaching and Learning Officer, who works closely on the Needs Hub. "It's to help you communicate your expectations clearly to students." The tool has been through five rounds of feedback from academic colleagues. "It's all about designing something colleagues feel is genuinely helpful." 

The University's approach to rolling out Microsoft Copilot to students follows the same pattern. Rather than launching and hoping for the best, the “Test, Learn and Adapt” approach means students have a genuine say in decisions. Working with the Copilot Student Advisory Group, our student testers and focus groups, we are collaborating on exploring policy and support needs and making decisions on communications approaches and learning how students actually use the technology, where they get stuck, and what support they'll need before it reaches everyone. 

Redesigning the first hundred days 

The same principles are changing how students arrive at Manchester. "One way we're reinventing our student experience is by looking at the welcome, induction and transition our students receive, that first hundred days that they have here, which is so critical to their academic success and to feeling that they belong," says Lindsay Bann, Success and Development Manager. Her team ran focus groups and one-to-one interviews to understand real student journeys, then brought together more than 40 staff from across student support services to work through what needed to change. "We're looking forward to a whole new experience that better supports students through that first semester, so they can really reach their full potential." 

The groundwork for a decade of change 

This is the groundwork of a strategy meant to last a decade: understanding problems properly, testing ideas before rolling them out widely, and adjusting based on what's learned. "We're testing solutions with our users before they ever get out into the real world," says Sarah. "The impacts we get are so different." 

Manchester 2035 is already changing how the University listens to students and designs around them. 

From Manchester, so far is a snapshot of the progress we're making as we deliver From Manchester for the World. Every colleague, student and partner has a role to play. Share your story and help show how we're working together to become a great civic university for the 21st century. https://uom.link/yourstorysofar