“Being there for our students” is the mantra of higher education. But, at a time when universities are facing cuts in budgets and staffing, it can feel like one aim too high.
We all want our courses to hit a 100 per cent student satisfaction score in the National Student Survey, but turning around a creative degree’s scores takes more than just tweaking assessments or sending out another feedback form.
For those on the BA (Hons) Broadcast Production: TV & Radio course, it meant something deeper: rebuilding trust, community and creative purpose after a challenging year. That also applied to the teaching teams – but more on that later.
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And the simple truth is that listening to students, supporting them on their journey, letting them know you are here and available is vital. That rule also extends to the lecturers, which is why our two-pronged attack brought success.
In 2024, our NSS results were, frankly, disappointing. There were bright spots but the overall satisfaction score of 61.9 per cent did not reflect the quality or passion we saw in our students’ work every day. We knew we had to stop, listen and really understand what our students were experiencing.
A year later, that process of reflection, collaboration and genuine engagement has led to a complete transformation. In May, the programme achieved 100 per cent overall satisfaction – a rare result across the sector.
Facing reality and rebuilding confidence
The year before our success, morale was subdued. The NSS can feel brutal. After all, it distils a thousand different moments of learning, frustration and joy into a single percentage. Yet, as we read through the detailed feedback, we began to see patterns that were not about content gaps or resources but about connection: how supported students felt, how clearly we communicated, how effectively we listened and gave feedback.
That insight became our starting point. Our first step was to bring the entire teaching team together – not to assign blame but to share honestly what was and wasn’t working.
Our colleague Elizabeth McLaughlin, media lead in the arts and media division, organised a series of events for programme leaders across the whole year. These sessions created a safe space to exchange ideas about teaching and assessment, and to look collectively at the NSS survey itself: what each question really asks and how students interpret it.
Those conversations were constructive and we knew student satisfaction was much more than a metric: it was about changing the culture to create a more positive, inclusive and supportive environment. That shift started in these meetings, which quickly grew to include colleague conversations and cross-programme collaboration between teams that shared their approaches to supporting students.
When students feel seen, informed and supported – when they trust their tutors and their timetable – satisfaction follows naturally. The same applied to us as colleagues, sharing our experiences and approaches on how to engage more with students. Developing an environment of trust meant that we felt not only seen but that we were truly in this together, with the aim for every programme – and therefore every student – to get the best our university could offer.
We opened up these collegial conversations and invited peers across the division to listen to stimulating and fun discussions on subjects such as the student journey from induction to graduation and assessment preparation, feedback and feedforward, including mid-module reviews, and extracurricular engagement. These sessions – which included tea, coffee and cake – and being together in a space where we could talk pedagogy and listen to each other’s learning and teaching insights, were a highlight of our year and created a greater sense of togetherness.
Ultimately, we ended up collaborating, and Elizabeth presented at the annual monitoring event later in the term, as part of our session on good practice.
The real purpose was to ensure we had the right student impact, and that they felt supported, even if that didn’t equate to better NSS scores. We know how fickle surveys can be.
For students, being heard is vital. A simple – yet immediately impactful – change from institutional speak was when Kate suggested we change the name of the Student Staff Liaison Group to Student Voice. In two words the students understand exactly what the group is and what it does. The voice of the student could now be heard loud and clear.
Going back to first principles
For Kate as a programme leader, those cross-programme meetings put renewed focus on the basics of good teaching in a fast-moving creative subject. Broadcast production students need both technical mastery and editorial confidence: the ability to operate a studio camera or mix live radio but also to tell stories that matter. To achieve that balance, we refined our approach to assessment, ensuring every project mirrored professional practice and built progressively toward real-world outcomes.
We introduced clearer, more standardised marking criteria, making sure feedback was both timely and developmental. The 2025 NSS reflected this: 100 per cent of students said they received feedback on time, and 93 per cent agreed that assessments allowed them to demonstrate what they had learned – both well above the university average of 86 per cent.
But perhaps more important than the numbers was the mindset shift among staff. We started seeing feedback as an ongoing conversation rather than a one-off document and added a “going forward” section so that student could use assessment as a dialogue, asking sharper questions, reflecting more deeply and taking genuine ownership of their progress.
The 100 per cent score for BA (Hons) Broadcast Production was the highest in our division, but every programme saw significant improvement in results. Two out of the five eligible creative programmes improved 28 per cent and 24 per cent respectively.
Building on that was vital. The lessons we learned are worth sharing with everyone teaching in creative or practice-based subjects. Here are our big takeaways:
Lessons for creative education
First, listen before you fix. When results dip, the instinct is to act – but the most valuable action can be to pause and really hear what students are saying. Sometimes the problem isn’t pedagogical, it’s relational.
Second, share success internally. Elizabeth’s initiative to bring programme leaders together for open conversation was crucial. Higher education often rewards competition but collaboration is what sustains improvement.
Third, treat community-building as curriculum design, not an extracurricular luxury. A sense of belonging drives engagement, retention and satisfaction as powerfully as any assessment strategy. In creative disciplines, where confidence and collaboration are essential, community is pedagogy.
Finally, remember that student satisfaction is not the goal – it’s the evidence. The goal is meaningful learning, the kind that equips graduates to contribute ethically and creatively to society. Satisfaction follows from that integrity of purpose
In the second part of our story we will discuss the importance of well-being, building a community and industry connections on our road to NSS success.
Kate Cotter is programme leader and Elizabeth McLaughlin is media lead, both at the School of Business and Creative Industries at the University of the West of Scotland.
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