Student experience is one of just eight categories used by the prestigious Good University Guide to rank Britain’s top universities. It’s as important to the judges as teaching or research quality.   

Authored by Mark Bramwell, CIO of SaÏd Business School and Director of Strategic Digital Partnerships at University of Oxford.

Many Business Schools and Universities are facing a recruitment and revenue crisis. So it’s no surprise that Higher Education is paying more attention to learners, learner experience, their well-being, quality of life and social impact than ever before.  

But how do you deliver that and ensure the best, enabling and supportive student experience possible? High on the agenda is your institution’s technology.  

Here are my five tips for applying it best: 

Move fast

Covid changed everything for students and their learning experience. At Said Business School, before 2020 almost all learning was face-to-face. During lockdown we digitised all course content for all programmes for all our degrees and post graduate degrees. As a Business School (and University) we seamlessly moved all of our students online overnight, and have since supported over 40,000 online learners. 

We could do it because we had the technology in place, including a stable and scalable Cisco network that is looked after as a Managed Service by CAE. So we could switch our resources to training and support to make sure everyone could use the online content successfully. We didn’t lose one second of teaching to one student of one course. 

Make sure it works 

I often say I am not doing my job properly if the technology is an obstacle vs enabling a student’s learning and experience. That might sound trite, but if they can’t connect to the systems they need, if the Wi-Fi is poor, if there are too many disparate systems, we’re not performing properly and putting our student experience first. It’s about using technology to make the student experience the best, most friction-less and enabling it can be.  

Make it easy

Students today work, interact, communicate and collaborate in different ways even from students of ten years ago. They don’t read emails, they’re on apps and social media platforms for much of their free time. We have to communicate with them in the ways that suit them, wherever they are, any time of day.  

Students are also time pressured. We work them very hard and need to respect and support them properly. For example, in an ideal world we should give each student one identity and one system log on to do whatever they need as fast and effectively as possible. But too often we don’t make it easy for them. Too often they grapple with several ID’s and passwords and navigate between multiple disconnected non-intuitive systems.  

Help them feel relevant

Many young people are idealistic and passionate. They want their Business School or University to be equitable, diverse and inclusive. Technology can make step changes to a brighter and bigger future. Said Business School is part of the University of Oxford and proud to support this year an MBA cohort of 340 students from 67 countries, of whom 51% are women. It has also been recognised by the Financial Times as the 2024 No 1 Responsible Business School in the world further demonstrating our ESG, Green and Sustainability values. 

Walk on the wild side

We have to accept that we can’t always be in control of how technology is being used. It’s rapidly becoming a pervasive, commodity available to all. AI is a classic example. It might seem like we’re opening our doors to shadow IT and the outcome will be chaos. But we have to be bold and embrace change, because if we don’t, it will happen anyway.  

The important thing is to develop strategies that are flexible enough to accommodate tools that we can barely imagine today and work closely with students, faculty, researchers and staff to enable them to be the best and most effective they can be. We have to make our policies, processes and decision making agile (but sustainable, supportable and secure) to support experimentation, innovation and continuous improvement.   

To learn more on how we can support your technology needs, talk to us today.