Once upon a time there was a student satisfaction survey called HSS. It lived with its two older siblings, NSS and MEQ, who were mean and attention-grabbing.

The HSS might be the most strategically important survey the UoH runs, yet the completion rate is distressingly poor. If the University wants to begin competing on the basis of Teaching Excellence, this must change. But how? Why should individual staff and students engage? And how can we make meaningful sense of the results?

This workshop – which will use Mentimeter polling throughout (bring a device [laptops can be loaned]) – draws on work done in Chemistry to value, promote, and interpret the HSS. It will emphasise the ‘soft’ sharing of ideas between participants and the ‘hard’ didactic story of how our department has grappled with the HSS this year, boosting the participation rate from below 15% in 2017-18 to nearly 40% in 2018-19 and gathering strategically useful data for improving our League Table position.