At the end of first semester last year I sat down to do my review of the academic year so far and counted 34 individual research projects completed or ongoing by our research team.
That’s 34 briefs, research designs, reports and countless liaisons with stakeholders. But with a small team and the potential risk of inconsistencies within our research, it was clear we needed to try something new.
We’d been talking about the possibility of an online community for our membership for years.
We were regularly getting asked for “student voice” – which is no mean feat at a university with a diverse 44,000 student population. And the existing culture was one of developing a new initiative or changes to a policy and then consulting students with no real flexibility on the end goal.
Ready, steady, go
A couple years ago we developed our theory of impact which marked a fresh focus on the outcomes and impact of our activities, rather than the activities themselves.
The “voice” strand of this involves ensuring that more students have the opportunity to share their lived experiences and our members feel able to influence their student experience. We wanted a better understanding of students’ priorities which would then allow more of our activities to be influenced by our membership.
And this is where “The Union Unfiltered” comes in.
This is our agile and asynchronous online community that gives us real-time and instant access to an engaged pool of students – we’re currently at 550. We can gain insights and inform policy as well as creating a safe space for students to come to us with any surfacing issues or priorities for change.
It’s completely changed the way we manage our research.
Of course there’s still space for quantitative surveys, we still run our two key trend-tracker surveys separate to the online community, as we have for over ten years.
But those 34 projects I mentioned earlier now feed into our online community. The community is a protected space where we only talk to students about the things that matter to them.
Every fortnight a new research project is set live on the platform, consisting of several smaller research activities that all feed into one topic.
So far we’ve covered financial education, mental health and wellbeing, transport behaviours, our student bar and safety on campus.
And the insights travel far, they’ve been presented to Transport for Greater Manchester to lobby for cheaper student tram travel, they’ll support our submission for the Responsible Futures accreditation and will compliment the university’s work on the refreshed Student Futures Commitment.
The community thrives on gaining insightful, qualitative evidence and that’s where we focus our efforts.
We recently asked students how they manage mental health challenges through particularly stressful times and the result was a really rich conversation between students who shared tips and advice and offered support to others – the epitome of what a community is all about. The peer-to-peer support in a safe platform saw students support each other and offered us insight.
Check mate
We’re no exception to the challenges of engaging students in research work. This is why the gamification of the platform and the community aspect is key.
Alongside our fortnightly research activities, community activities such as forums, blogs, scrapbooks and newsletters run parallel. It’s these low-effort, low-stakes activities that we hope will get students through the door and engage with the platform with the hope that they will then go on to complete a research activity.
Community and research have to work together to uplift and support you, and the students, get the most out of it.
The gamification of the platform comes in with the incentives. Each activity in the online community has a certain number of points allocated to it. This doesn’t just apply to our research activities, but also posting a picture in a scrapbook, commenting in a forum or adding a profile picture.
The number of these points depends on how long the activity will take for the student to complete and how actively they have to engage. These points convert into entries for our monthly prize draw of a range of vouchers, totalling £250.
If a member earns a certain number of points, they earn a different coloured icon on our leaderboard which is displayed on their profile. Voucher winners are announced on the platform and in our newsletters every month, giving that transparency to others that someone does actually win these things!
It’s not too dicey
We’re still in our first year of the community and we’re already seeing the benefits.
Interest in the community is starting to disperse around the university. Students are giving us insights that we’d traditionally taken weeks to gather before. They’re at the centre of The Union’s decision making and have the opportunity to get involved with some major change projects which will shape the next generation of students’ experiences at the university.
And importantly our online community has increased our brand reputation amongst students as an organisation that actively listens to its members.
For those thinking of starting an online community, the biggest piece of advice would be to not underestimate the time and resources.
Learning how to use a bespoke research platform, understanding how to set up each activity and manage a new database, all while supporting the design of the community and initiating stakeholder conversations is a lot for one person.
Of course, surveys and traditional research methods will always have their place, but for an increasingly digital-first population who also crave that belongingness that comes from being in a community with shared interests, an online community is the way forward.
As the student community becomes more diverse in their needs, interests and patterns of engagement, our research approaches needs to shift with them.
