Moving away from MEQs – why and what next

The trouble with surveys

Response rates of 30-40% are quite typical for digital surveys that evaluate students’ learning experience (Chaudhury and Jenkins, 2021), such as Module Evaluation Questionnaires (MEQs) which have long been the tradition at SHU. Since 22/23, the average MEQ response rate across the university has hovered between 17 – 19% and, when confronted with this, module leaders are often nervous about acting on the intelligence that these surveys offer when response rates are low. This brings into question whether we should continue our use of MEQs at SHU, or try something different.

Driving response rates for MEQs is difficult due to three main reasons. First, we know that students experience ‘survey fatigue’ (see Porter et al., 2004) and therefore asking them to complete the same survey multiple times each semester is not ideal. Second, students regularly encounter technical issues when attempting to access the survey using through QR codes and generic links. Often the only viable option is to ask students to respond to a unique link contained in an email – and we all know how that story goes! Finally, only module leaders can access MEQs through the EvaSys+ portal to release the surveys and issue notifications for students to complete them. Therefore, any other staff member with a vested interest in maximising MEQ response rates across their school/institute cannot influence this process. Any alternative approach adopted within SHU would do well to address some of the above issues.

Piloting a course-level alternative

In the academic year 2025/26, we piloted a Course-Level Evaluation Questionnaire (CLEQ) across three of the nine schools/institutes at SHU. The aim was to achieve a more meaningful response rate and therefore student feedback that course and module delivery teams could trust. The CLEQ mitigated survey fatigue, since it required students to complete a single survey at the end of each semester with just six questions. And this time, the survey ran through Jisc rather than EvaSys+. This enabled enthusiastic others (such as myself) to access the survey and send mail mergers direct to non-respondents, rather than relying solely on module leaders to drive response rates.

In trimester one, the CLEQ was piloted among 8,287 students across schemes A, B and C and achieved an 11% response. The survey ran again in trimester two, this time with postgraduate students removed from the sample (so as not to impede PTES completions), with a slightly higher response rate of 13%. Course leaders praised the two free-text questions for generating useful qualitative insights that could inform their future planning, but a high volume of courses received few (if any) completions.

In sum, module-level surveys do not achieve meaningful response rates for the vast majority of SHU provision and, despite our best efforts, the results of a course-level alternative were no better.

What’s next for SHU?

Following Iain Garner’s recent announcement, we will now concentrate our efforts into locally designed, in-module feedback only. The results and follow up of end of module evaluation are often not visible to students, whereas in-module approaches encourage module teams to take a few minutes in a teaching session to explain what has changed (or not) and why. Therefore, students favour these more agile and in-class opportunities to speak up because they are more likely to affect change and experience the feedback loop being closed.

I have led work on module evaluation and student voice at department, school and university-level at various points over the past four years and I am confident that this is the right move for us at SHU. Tom Bassindale’s blog post has some salient advice for schools/institutes that want to get this right. First, time it right. Before the mid-point of a standard 12-week module is a good time to seek feedback – the loop closing becomes less meaningful beyond this. And second, the method isn’t important (so lean into your preference) but responding to feedback and showing students that their voice matters is.

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