2012 University Experience Survey National Report

How students experience university plays a major role in their academic, personal and professional success. Over the last decade Australian universities and governments have placed considerable emphasis on key facets of the student experience ecology such as skills development, student engagement, quality teaching, student support, and learning resources. This report discusses a 2012 project that furnished a new national architecture for collecting feedback on understanding the improving the student experience. The University Experience Survey (UES) has been developed by the Australian Government to provide a new national platform for measuring the quality of teaching and learning in Australian higher education. The UES focuses on aspects of the student experience that are measurable, linked with learning and development outcomes, and for which universities can reasonably be assumed to have responsibility. The survey yields results that are related to outcomes across differing institutional contexts, disciplinary contexts and modes of study. As such, the UES will provide new cross-institutional benchmarks that can aid quality assurance and improvement.