Student Insights Survey 2022/23

University Participant Overview

LearnSci is committed to understanding student opinion. We want to find out the impact our LabSims and Smart Worksheets are having on student engagement and preparedness for practical science, and we would love your help.

What is the Student Insights Survey?

The Student Insights Survey is designed to gain a deeper understanding of student views and usage of LearnSci resources at your institution and around the world. We successfully ran this survey as a pilot last year, and we are now inviting all partner institutions to take part.

We know students are asked a lot, so we’ve kept it concise but meaningful. The survey has a maximum of 16 short questions and will take students approximately four minutes to complete. The survey will be open between 26th September 2022 - 5th May 2023, and you are free to administer the survey whenever is convenient for your teaching within this timeframe.

‍A preview of the survey is available here, please note you will be provided with a unique URL to your institution's survey, this one is only for preview.

Who will benefit, and how?

The data collected will help you, your colleagues and LearnSci better understand and improve the student experience of using LabSims and Smart Worksheets, in turn helping support their learning and skill development. To help encourage survey participation, we offer the following benefits:

Your students’ responses

Two dashboards of all your students’ responses: one in Jan for Sept-Dec responses, and one overall after survey closure. Other data visualisation requests can be discussed, and raw data for your institution is available on request.

Top-level report

An overview report summarising outcomes and key findings of aggregated and analysed data from across all institutions, with additional insights and comparisons.

Enhanced analysis*

Compare your institution’s responses benchmarked against the overall findings for selected questions. (*if over 50 student responses obtained at your institution)

Charitable donation

For every student response, LearnSci will donate 50p to the Woodland Trust (up to £500), helping protect existing forests and plant new ones.

What will my role be, and what support will I have?

As a primary survey contact for your university or department, we ask you to share the survey link with students e.g. by embedding the survey within your VLE/LMS after a LabSim or Smart Worksheet, or directly via email.

We would also encourage you to share the survey with potentially interested colleagues to maximise coverage and sample size from your institution. Each institution can have one or more primary survey contacts. Staff do not have to be primary contacts to use the survey, so long as there is at least one active primary survey contact at their institution.

Email and videocall support is available throughout the process when needed, and we will provide everything you need to bring the survey to your students:

A survey URL unique to your institution (or per department, upon request).

Participant Information Leaflet (PIL) should students wish to know more about how data will be collected, analysed and stored.

Brief introductory text from us to optionally include alongside your instructions to students.

Occasional updates including participation numbers, tips and ideas for implementation.

Further information

Has ethical approval been obtained?

Yes. We have been working with the University of Warwick and have gained ethical approval for this research through the Biomedical and Scientific Research Ethics Committee (BSREC). If you would like further evidence of ethical approval, or if your university ethics committee requires additional information in order to approve the use of this survey, please contact emily.coyte@learnsci.com (Emily Coyte, Educational Research Lead).

What data will be collected?

The survey is for students who have used LearnSci LabSims or Smart Worksheets as part of their course material in the same academic year as the survey. It will collect student opinion on use, impact and experience using LabSims and Smart Worksheets via anonymous URL (unique for your institution). No personal data will be collected from students, all data collected will be fully anonymous. A preview of the survey is available here.

How will the data be used and shared?

Data from the survey will inform LearnSci product development, and evidence impact and student opinion of our resources. Anonymised data may also be used in online articles, webinars, conference talks and academic publications or other educational research that looks at the impact of LearnSci resources and how best they can be used - get in touch if you would like to be involved.

You are welcome to use the data from your own institution and the overall findings to inform how you would like to use LearnSci resources in future courses, and to share the insights gained with colleagues.

Participating institutions will be supplied with a Data Sharing Agreement prior to rolling out the survey.

What else do I need to know?

Participation is optional for you and your students, and is unrelated from other aspects of your partnership with LearnSci. You are free to withdraw from survey involvement at any time after sign-up at any time. Upon request we are additionally able to deactivate your institution-specific collector URL, and delete all responses from your institution obtained from this link. Individual students taking the survey can withdraw at any time by simply closing the browser window before submitting. After submission, their responses will be anonymised and therefore withdrawal will not be possible.

If you have any questions, comments or concerns, please contact emily.coyte@learnsci.com (Emily Coyte, Educational Research Lead) or bill.heslop@learnsci.com (Bill Heslop, Managing Director).

What's next?

Let us know you want your students to have the opportunity to participate in the Student Insights Survey by completing this short form.