Making the student voice count: using qualitative student feedback to enhance the student experience

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to outline how qualitative data can be used to gain insights into the experience of different cohorts of students including online and on-campus students.

Design/methodology/approach

Qualitative data from student surveys are used to analyse three years of data. The text analytics software Leximancer was used to analyse the qualitative student comments.

Findings

Comparing comments of on-campus and online students, the findings indicate that the students had different perceptions in regards to what they rated as best aspects of their course and what needed improvement.

Originality/value

The study is based on three years of qualitative comments collected in student surveys. The study is unique, given that previous studies have looked at qualitative comments in general rather than comparing the experience of online and on-campus students.

Citation

Shah, M. and Pabel, A. (2020), "Making the student voice count: using qualitative student feedback to enhance the student experience", Journal of Applied Research in Higher Education, Vol. 12 No. 2, pp. 194-209. https://doi.org/10.1108/JARHE-02-2019-0030