Pulse Studies Have No Pulse

The scheme is sidelining class reps and failing to represent student's opinions

Class representatives: We couldn’t live without them. They are the backbone of St Andrews’ society. Who else is brave enough to email the module coordinator? Who else could encourage meaningful, student-focused change in entire departments? Who else actually cares about student experience? And no, I am not saying all this because I am one. I genuinely believe the University would fall into anarchy without us. And, with the way things are looking, we may be rendered redundant by a malignant force that has rudely infiltrated our systems: the dreaded Pulse survey.Now, I know most of you don’t know what that is, because none of you filled it in. This semester saw record lows in student engagement in the Mid-Semester Surveys. Previously, class reps, School Presidents, and Convenors worked with module coordinators to custom-build a tailored survey for each year group — the results of which we present to staff during Student-Staff Consultative Committees (SSCCs). This feedback is essential for fostering a student-led university environment where staff take students' opinions and concerns into consideration.  We ask specific questions on everything from ‘how’s the diss going?’ to ‘do you feel supported in the transition between school and uni?’ Being students ourselves, we know exactly what questions need to be asked, what students may be struggling with, what they find rewarding. Our job is to collect actual data from the surveys we make, to determine whether grumbled complaints about that tutor were indicators of a larger problem, or if we were all just feeling a bit tired that day. We are democratically elected, representing and advocating for our peers. We connect staff to students, keeping both sides updated on the mysterious goings-on of the other. We are the blood of the campus. And I do hope you can excuse such a blatant use of a cliché, but if you name a survey ‘Pulse,’ you really are asking for it. Pulse surveys are vampiric, greedily consuming the role of the class rep, all while draining the life from the University itself.

Essentially, Pulse surveys are university-created and mandated surveys. Which isn’t inherently bad, of course, but I have to wonder if any of the uni higher-ups have heard the age-old proverb, ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’ The questions they provide are vague, boring, and irrelevant. Asking students to rate their experience on a module isn’t going to provide staff with any meaningful data to act on. The most helpful part of the Pulse survey (if you can call it helpful) is the section where students are allowed to leave comments. These comments are optional and framed non-specifically, meaning most students don’t even know what to say and leave them blank. This all may seem mostly unoffensive, if a bit wasteful. The real issue here is that these comments are not provided to School Presidents, Convenors, or class reps. Yes, you read that right. Ostensibly for data protection purposes, the students who are meant to present the findings of these surveys only have access to the quantitative data; in essence, “98% of responses rated their experience as ‘good’ or ‘very good’ on this module.” Instead, all of the comments, the qualitative data, are provided only to the module coordinator. We, as class reps, then have to beg the module coordinator for access to these comments, only to then present them back to the module coordinator in the SSCC. Are you seeing the issue?

The Pulse surveys completely remove students from the so-called ‘feedback loop.’ We submit our issues, and get a couple of sentences back from the module coordinator. If things keep moving in this direction, I wouldn’t be surprised if class reps are removed entirely, as there is literally no point to our work under the Pulse system.

It’s not all doom and gloom, though; staff and students have been very vocal about the inefficiency of Pulse surveys, and the University is well aware of the issues. The Proctor and Dean for Learning and Teaching have set up a working group with the School Presidents to improve things for next semester. We’ll have to keep our fingers crossed. Our democracy depends on it.

Illustration from Wikimedia Commons