Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey 2016 results: 80% student satisfaction rates recorded

The Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey (PTES) was launched at UCL for the first time this year.

In the inaugural survey, 80% of postgraduate taught students told us they are happy with their experience at UCL, while Teaching and Learning, and Learning Resources and Support Services sections scored the highest for satisfaction.

Students were particularly positive about the teaching at UCL, with 90% agreeing that 'Staff are enthusiastic about what they are teaching' and 87% agreeing 'Staff are good at explaining things'.

There are very high satisfaction levels for some departments with 100% overall satisfaction for the Departments of Science, Technology, Engineering & Public Policy and Statistical Science and high scores for Chemical Engineering (97%) and Physics and Astronomy (96%).

As with the NSS results, feedback and marking criteria is the biggest area of concern with only 58% of students agreeing 'feedback on my work has been prompt'.

Initiatives for improvement

A number of initiatives are being rolled out to improve assessment, feedback and other key areas including:

• This year will see students work as consultants with postgraduate departments to improve assessment and feedback processes via the UCL ChangeMakers scheme
• A comprehensive review of postgraduate taught education is currently underway and we are developing a number of recommendations for how we can improve delivery of postgraduate taught education at UCL, including improvements to assessment and feedback. We are seeking your feedback and thoughts through focus groups across the institution.
• We are trialling new ways of providing students with feedback eg piloting the My Feedback tool which lets students see their feedback and grades more quickly and in one place.

Dr Clare Goudy, Director of Education Planning said, "UCL is a predominantly postgraduate institution and it is vital we understand more about the postgraduate taught students' needs and expectations and what this means for how we deliver education.

"It's great to see some departments have such high satisfaction scores in the PTES but now we need to work together to ensure we are delivering this level of experience across all departments. As a result of our review of postgraduate taught education we've started to develop a number of recommendations and will be seeking input from students later this year."

Departments will respond to the results of the Postgraduate Taught Survey by producing an action plan as part of the Annual Student Experience Review (ASER) process. For more information about the Postgraduate Taught Review survey, you can view the headline results via You Shape UCL website.

Sally Mackenzie, Head of Student Engagement, Office of the Vice-Provost (Education and Student Affairs)