6 top tips for promoting the NSS 2025 to your students

The 2025 National Student Survey (NSS) is open from Wednesday 8 January until Wednesday 30 April. All eligible students will be contacted by email from Thursday 9 January and asked to complete the survey.

A 50% response rate with at least 10 respondents is required for departmental results to be published, but higher response rates bring in even more valuable feedback.

Like every year, we need your help in promoting the survey to our student community. Here are a few helpful hints and tips on ways in which you can help promote the NSS to your students. 

1. Download our promotional materials for NSS 2025

Staff can download a variety of co-branded NSS promotional materials, including web banner images and email signature designs from the Templates and Guides page.

These materials can help raise awareness of the NSS among students in your department. In addition to mentioning the NSS during lectures, seminars or tutorials you can also use Moodle as your classroom. Adding an NSS banner to the top of key Moodle pages is a useful way to promote the survey.

You might also consider sending Moodle messages that update students on the latest departmental response rate. (Starting Tuesday 21 January, weekly response rate updates will be shared by faculty, department, and programme level.)

2. Promote the survey via social media

Many students are engaging more regularly with their departments via social media, and there are plenty of opportunities for staff to encourage completion of NSS 2025 via these channels.

On our Templates and guides page, you can find Instagram stories and other images and banners that can be added to various social media channels.

Staff should refrain from sharing current response rates via a public account however, as these are now counted as an Official Statistic under the Office for Students, so should not be publicly shared until the full results are released in the summer.    

3. Ask your Student Academic Reps to get involved

Student Academic Reps have built good relationships with their peers and are in a great place to help raise awareness of the NSS with their fellow students. Sharing resources such as promotional materials with the student reps is a great place to start.

You could also share with your reps how the scores and comments from previous National Student Surveys have inspired change at departmental, faculty and UCL-wide levels. Examples of improvements made in response to student feedback can be found on You Shape UCL pages.

4. Promote the UCL departmental incentive and involve students in decision-making

The UCL incentive scheme is running again this year to help encourage students to complete the NSS questionnaire. Departments achieving a 70% response rate will receive additional funding to spend on their undergraduate finalist students. The funds range from £250 to a maximum of £1,500 according to the size of the NSS-eligible cohort. 

Why not start providing your students with a regular response rate update in comparison to the 70% target? This reward money has proven to be a great incentive, encouraging students to take part.

Let students know that the reward money will be spent in agreement with them. This is another way of demonstrating how completing the survey can lead to positive change for the department. Some departments have also organised polls via Moodle to canvass students on how the funds should be used.

Please note that the funds allocated to departments who meet the 70% mark depend upon the size of the NSS-eligible cohort in that department:

5. Ask teaching staff to get involved

All departments have an NSS Survey Liaison Officer but as always, all staff are invited to help promote the survey; students have reported that they are most influenced to complete feedback activities when encouraged to do so by a member of staff they know already.

Academic staff who are looking to boost response rates for their department can consider mentioning the NSS in their online teaching sessions and explaining why it is a valuable source of feedback for UCL. We have provided a set of NSS 2025 powerpoint slides as a good starting point for staff to tailor and add to their online lecture, if they wish. 

6. Let your students know about this year's graduation package incentives

This year students will also have the option to enter into a prize draw where 20 students will have the opportunity to win a graduation package that will support the cost of their graduation ceremony.  

The graduation package includes: 

• 1 x graduation gown hire
• 2 x guest tickets
• 1 x studio portrait
• Postage and packaging – up to £29.95.