Surveys

This is a key student voice activity that provides an essential source of information for programme teams as well as senior University colleagues. It is an opportunity to gather thoughts and experiences of our students during their undergraduate and postgraduate taught programmes.

There are three main surveys coordinated by the team:

Mid-semester surveys: students usually complete the survey between weeks 4 and 6 of teaching, each semester. This is a quick pulse survey to give programme teams the opportunity to make changes in-programme.
Unit Surveys: students complete the survey towards the end of each semester, for each unit they have studied. This is the culmination of their experience on each course unit. Course units to be included in the survey are identified by each School.
PGT Experience survey: students are sent the survey once they have submitted their dissertation, usually at the end of September/early October. Students can reflect on the dissertation element as well as their programme experience as a whole.

In 2025/26, when are surveys released?

Semester 1

PGT dissertation survey: 6 October to 26 October 2025
Mid-semester surveys: Each Faculty are delivering their own initiative, please contact your leaders
Unit surveys: 8 December 2025 to 2 January 2026

Semester 2

Mid-semester surveys: Each Faculty are delivering their own initiative, please contact your leaders
Unit surveys: 20 April 2026 to 15 May 2026

Who decides which course units are surveyed and who can see results?

The team have a list of School Professional Services contacts, usually Curriculum and Progression (C&P) or Information, Advice and Governance (IAG) colleagues, who are contacted in advance of each survey to confirm which units should be included. They will also confirm which academic staff teach on the unit which is checked by the academic unit lead through a process known as DIG (see Survey Tools for further information).

These academics will receive reporting following survey closure. Unit level reporting will also be available to school and faculty in addition to the aggregate reporting that is produced.

If you have any questions, please contact the team’s central inbox below.

What questions are students asked?

Each survey contains a mixture of scale questions and free-text comments. Scale questions are mandatory, but comment questions are optional.

For unit surveys, there are five core University questions that all students are asked. These are agreed through the Student Survey Working Group, as follows:

Overall, I would rate this unit as being excellent (scale question)
The unit was well organised (scale question)
The feedback that I received on my learning was helpful (scale question)
What was good about this unit? (free-text comment)
What could be improved about this unit? (free-text comment)

Schools are also able to ask an additional five school-specific questions. These are signed off by the School Academic Teaching and Learning lead (Head of Education, Director of Education, Director of Teaching, Learning and Students), and School Head of Teaching, Learning and Student Experience (HoTLSEs).

How is the survey distributed?

All students will receive an email from teachingandlearningsurveys@manchester.ac.uk containing a unique link to their surveys. If multiple surveys are available (e.g., for more than one unit), students will see a list and can complete each survey individually. After submitting one survey, they can return to the list to complete others.

In addition to email, staff can use survey links and QR codes to help increase response rates. When using these, students will be prompted to sign in with their University username and password to access any surveys assigned to them. Staff will receive an error as there is no survey instance for them to complete.

There are two options for sharing links:

Unit-Specific Link (via Subject Management in Blue)
- Directs students straight to the first page of your unit’s survey, bypassing the full list.
- Ideal for in-session completion during contact hours.
- Links and QR codes are available through Subject Management in Blue.
- Academic staff will be notified by email when links are ready and can also monitor live response rates.
- Non-academic staff can download a project-level QR code can also be downloaded here
Project-Level Links
- For each survey project a project-level access link and QR code will be made available.
- Staff who are not teaching in the semester can download these at the below link once available each semester
  - [Will be updated with a link in advance of Semester 2 surveys]

It is an expectation that teaching teams will allocate time in-session for promotion and completion of the course unit survey.

Will students be reminded to complete the survey?

A coordinated approach to comms will be used in Semester 2 2025/2026 to support aims to both increase response rates and manage the amount of emails students are receiving.

All students will receive an invitation email on Monday 20th April from teachingandlearningsurveys@manchester.ac.uk.

Reminder emails will automatically deliver from the system to students who have not yet completed all of their surveys up to four times across the survey period. These emails should be considered supplimentary to the expectation to allocate time in-session for survey promotion and completion.

Other channels will be used to support promotion to students

Schools will include messaging in student newsletters
Canvas will display a pop-up banner with information about course unit surveys from Wednesday 10th December
Social media posts will be used, with aims to include video content from key individuals.
A generic call to action slide can be displayed by colleagues, which can be downloaded [link will be provided closer to launch]
All academic colleagues are expected to support promotion and completion of the surveys on units they deliver this semester through allocated in-session time. They will have been emailed about options available for them to do this, but they can also refer to the section above titled "How is the survey distributed?"

How do students complete the survey?

Students click on the link and are taken to a browser window containing a list of all surveys they have been assigned. They select a survey, complete the scale questions (which are mandatory) and add any comments if they wish to (these are optional). Once they have finished, they click ‘submit’ for their response to be logged. The system will then return students to the list of all surveys they have been assigned to so they can continue to work through the list.

How can staff see the survey results?

Instructor reports

Academic staff who have been identified as teaching on a unit will be able to see a report on their unit(s) in the week after the survey closes. These are known as “individual instructor reports”. Where schools ask instructor questions the report will display just the score of the named individual. Combined unit level scores for all instructors will be presented in aggregated unit level reporting.

Instructors can make use of Blue Home to review reports from previous semesters (2025-2026 onwards only)

Aggregate reports

Aggregate reports combine units into subject/discipline areas, Schools and Faculties. Once instructor reports are finalised, aggregate reports are generated and shared with key Faculty and School colleagues for quality assurance and monitoring purposes. This will include Vice Deans for Teaching, Learning and Students, Heads of Education, Directors of Education, Directors of Teaching, Learning and Students, and Faculty/School Heads of Teaching, Learning and Student Experience (HoTLSEs).

For general queries, please e-mail teachingandlearningsurveys@manchester.ac.uk