Death by survey

STOP PRESS. UCAS are stepping up consultancy and looking to improve insight. And drum up business, no doubt. In a nod to the dangers of survey fatigue, UCAS have, however declared in the process of improving insight and making money, no applicant would be surveyed more than seven times.

Seven times.

Then there's Youthsight's Higher Expectations survey. And The Student Room's Options. Then there's the National Clearing Survey. There will be international barometers, open day surveys for every institution applied to - Beds included - then the Accepters (hoorah!) or Decliners (sniff...) surveys. And Buzzfeeds, paid surveys, forms which feel like surveys, forms which are designed not to feel like surveys etc.

All this before people choose whether or not they're going to enrol, when they'll be duly served by Welcome and New Student surveys.

Little wonder that surveys across many institutions are becoming less and less effective, as participation rates shrink and survey fatigued subjects either limp or sprint through forms, with their brains and emotions engaged purely on the carrotty incentive attached as a reward for completion. Surveying student views is incredibly important. The problem we face is that by the time we have students, the human beings have been asked so many questions that they're punch drunk.

For my own part, as a member of University staff, there's Beds Stars. A way for individuals to highlight other individuals who have provided exceptional collegiate support. I'm not surveyed anything like as much as students are, but I feel weary about Beds Stars. A begrudging degree of guilt and responsibility will push me towards filling in a few nominations, particularly because the Uni is full of excellent, friendly and helpful people. Many of us are, after all, stars, regardless of whether or not we're nominated. Surely. We deserve credit, but the Stars thing's a little arbitrary. Too important to lay on people who may not be especially informed about the starry qualities of people they're not nominating.

What if I deserve a nomination, but I work in a more isolated area, or the people I work with are less likely to fill in or even to have heard of the scheme?

Filling in some survey or other

Beds Stars feels a tiny bit like the Brexit referendum - individuals won't and can't know the bigger picture and may be confused or duped by propaganda. Beds Stars feels even more like market research, to be fair, in as much as it's a kind of answer for a kind of unanswerable problem. Fine as far as it goes, but not the be all and end all.

All that said, I hope to be nominated this year.

There's no place on Beds Stars to nominate teams. Which is a shame. Shouldn't we be thinking more of effective, silo-busting, friendly and co-operative teams? Or is this just a pipe dream of some busted guy who remembers when we talked rather than emailed, served tea from thee olde Clipper ships in china cups and weren't all beholden to fake celebration on social media?

Anyway, my partner's off this weekend, so I'll mainly be watching jazz in a Luton club, rock and roll in a Luton pub and steam trains and football in Bury, Greater Manchester.

A team that plays together stays together

Beverley Hoare, Deputy Director of MARC

In Marcoms we’re very noses to the grindstone and drop everything at a moment’s notice to respond to some urgent press query, an event that we hadn’t been notified about or an emergency update to the website kind of people!

So to get a date that everyone (almost) could attend and in the end to pull themselves away from work for an away day was no small achievement. But the team wanted it, asked for it and valued it. Why?

Celebrating our team
achievements

Superglue - it’s important for team bonding – because we learn more about each other: likes, dislikes, motivations, because we like spending time together and we get to have fun. It gives some light relief from the day to day, a bit of perspective on our challenges and an opportunity to recognise the teams and individual achievements. 

Lots of life happens in the course of an academic year, so we celebrate too – one baby due in October, one marriage, two engagements, two 30^th birthdays and a house move.  We’ve had several losses to the team (fortunately not through natural causes) and two new staff have joined the team, but both worked at Bedfordshire previously – they loved it so much they came back.

Who do we think we are – in a Myers Briggs type approach we completed an online test to assess our personality types.  You might imagine that all marketers are extroverts, but not so, we’re quite an introverted bunch, drawing on our own internal imaginations and creativity.  As a team we are very caring, supportive and sensitive types, so be gentle with your critique – though we’re not looking for glory we do appreciate a well-placed compliment J

The Press team dominated the quiz, 
showcasing an unusual specialism in
animal trivia! 

Quiz master Andy entertained us with obscure questions about how male goats get a mate and the colour of a hippos sweat when it gets stressed – google it.  I may not be able to remember the answers to the serious HE questions but weirdly these have stuck.

It’s wasn’t  all fun and games - we ran some serious activities too, honest – we did some looking back and looking forward, focused on our objectives and the new PDA programme and generated loads of ideas for the question ‘how can we improve our brand, reputation and recruitment through social media’.  If you have any burning desire to give us some ideas please do get in touch.

Focus!

Hello. I'm Andy. This is my picture. You might suppose I read the weather or drive buses, but I don't. I'm Market Research Manager at the University of Bedfordshire and part of the wider Marketing team. Market Research is usually viewed as a poor, rather distant cousin of academic research, but provides dynamic information in support of our marketing initiatives.

This is my first post on the University’s Marketing blog. Normal service will be resumed next week. For now, it’s high time to dust off the pie charts, chuck a few pivots around, take a sneaky peak at our competitors and let you know the sort of thing we get up to in Market Research. And, perhaps, to persuade readers to take part in focus groups and help themselves to the rather enticing rewards available for an hour’s worth of time……

Market Research can very broadly be split into quantitative (quant) and qualitative (qual) research. Both are difficult to say, but both would score well in Scrabble. ‘Quant’ involves surveys, data immersion - and all the thoughtful soul searching and occasional flashes of blind terror associated with juggling huge Excel spreadsheets – qual involves talking to people, which can be even more terrifying. That's a very broad explanation; there's more

Both methods have pros and cons, although most market research problems are best approached, when possible, with a mixture. This will allow researchers to gain insight from audiences picking up on areas you hadn’t thought about (qual) and then to quantify and see how strong these feelings are across different audiences (quant). See?

Timescales and budgets don’t always allow for this two pronged approach. However, the Market Research team and a colleague from our Internal Communications team recently carried out some groups with students in Luton and Bedford in support of an online survey. We were looking, specifically, at what I’d assumed would be a limited subject - the content, display and accessibility of the Uni’s digital signage. Or “noticeboards” as I insisted on calling them to my increasingly exasperated colleague in Comms.

That’s right. Digital Signage. The merits, locations and use of. One hour. Discuss.

I prepared as best I could, mustering as much bluster, enthusiasm and stationery as I could. In anyone’s language, talking about digital signage for an hour was, I though just too focused. I’d laced the discussion guide with a few more wide-ranging questions in case things ground to an undignified, awkward halt, but still, we were really going to ask our respondents to work for their Amazon vouchers on this occasion……

But, readers, the groups not only went well, but were extremely interesting. As is often the case, there is (or are) no straight answers. No silver bullet, smoking guns, great decrees or show stopping, ground breaking insight. (A reminder, we were talking about noticeboards. Sorry, Digital Signage). The groups did, however, give the Communications team some valuable insights and pointers for future development and were more than happy to use up some of the stationery I'd bought them. 

One group member even drew some flowers. I wasn't sure and she wasn't sure why, but she did so in a supportive kind of way. She seemed to be having a nice time and wanted to let the group know. And they're nice flowers, right? Naturally, I'd've preferred a picture of football, motorbikes or rock and roll, but I was touched by the sentiment and impressed by the nifty execution.

So yes. Focus groups can be tough, for invigilators and for respondents. No doubt. And it's not always easy to tell which are going to work and which are not. But at the end of it, if all goes well, they can be enjoyable for all and provide fantastic input for the University's work. And an Amazon voucher FOR YOU, YES YOU (fill in this form if you'd like to be considered for future involvement).

If they can help improve the way we do things, then it can only be a good thing.