Get involved in our national student experience research

Over the past few years we’ve been working with SUs to generate powerful new insights on the student experience.

SUs (and the universities you work with) have gained a robust, reliable and regular way to understand the lives of students and their concerns.

A significant number of SUs were able to take part – both gaining insight into their own student body, and helping build a national picture too.

We’ve published compelling and impactful evidence on student health, students at work, basic needs, student poverty, connection and belonging, disabled students, free speech and confidence and even on sleep, work and travel.

This year we’re taking the project “in house”, which will enable us to make some changes to make it more impactful and easier for SUs to take part in.

And this year we’re also piloting a new project that will give the sector near-instant answers to questions concerning the student experience via your course, departmental and faculty reps.

Rep-ping

Rep-Ping is our new pilot project designed to capture the daily experiences and views of student representatives at course, departmental, school, or faculty level. Each day, reps will receive two questions via a push notification, taking under a minute to answer. The app will collect this feedback to build a real-time picture of the student experience both across your university and nationally, surfacing insights into teaching, learning, academic support, and systemic issues that reps encounter. Participants will be able to see how their responses compare with others (both locally and nationally) helping them and you to raise the issues that matter.

For SUs, Rep-Ping will offer a powerful tool to amplify rep voices and inform decision-making with almost-live, representative data. It will support reps by promoting reflection, increasing engagement, and reducing isolation – especially for those new to the role or in smaller departments. The anonymised data will be able to be used to spot patterns early, evidence change, and strengthen SU’s influence with university leadership. Piloting the app is a low-effort, high-impact way to enhance representation systems and better understand the rep experience across your institution.

If you’re an education officer, voice coordinator or anyone else that’s interested in being part of the pioneer pilot, drop us an email right now.

Wonkhe’s Student Experience Survey

Three times throughout the academic year, we’ll run an (unbranded) national student experience survey that contains both quantitative and qualitative questions – with some questions asked each time so you can track how views change over the year, and some that are different each time to help drive the national policy debate over the student experience.

Every term the survey episode will run for a month or so, and will always contain questions on the student academic experience, SUs, careers, wellbeing and belonging and freedom of speech. Participating SUs will have access to a dashboard that shows your results and allows comparison with the national dataset. And it’s all free as part of your subscription with Wonkhe SUs.

Our additional major themes this year will be:

• Term 1 – How well students feel their institution is organised and managed, the extent to which they're experiencing impacts from financial pressures and cuts (to staff, services, facilities, or course offerings), what they were promised or expected when they applied, and how the reality of their student experience matches up to those expectations.
• Term 2 – How students are using AI tools in their studies, what guidance and boundaries they're receiving from their institution, their approaches to assessment in an AI-enabled environment, the extent to which they feel they're actually learning and developing skills (rather than just completing assignments), and how AI is affecting their academic integrity, confidence, and sense of achievement.
• Term 3 – Whether students feel represented by their SUs and course representatives, how aware they are of representation structures, the extent to which they feel listened to and able to influence decisions that affect them, their experiences of raising concerns or feedback, and how effectively they feel student voice is shaping institutional policies and practices.

Fieldwork dates

These are the provisional dates for each survey, subject to news on when NSS 2026 will run. You don’t have to promote for the whole period, but it would be helpful if you can promote in whatever way you can (emails, socials etc) to maximise your participation rate.

Term One

• Opens Monday 13th October 2025 (you don’t have to be ready by then!)
• Closes Friday 29th November 2025

Term Two

• Opens Monday 9th February 2026
• Closes Friday 13th March 2026

Term Three

• Opens Monday 30th March 2026
• Closes Friday 8th May 2026

Sign up now

To get involved in Wave 1 of the survey, we’ll need you to drop us an email to register your interest by Friday 10th October. And if you have any other questions do drop us a line.

Frequently asked questions

Q: Can an SU sign up and review the information collected without necessarily participating in the survey process itself?

A: As a subscriber SU you’ll see the key national findings from both the core and contemporary questions on a regular basis – but not a dashboard for your SU.

Q: Would it be possible to join the process later on in the academic year, or just take part in 1 or 2 of the three surveys?

A: Yes – obviously it’s great to be gathering data as early as possible to track changes, but do feel free to get involved when you’re ready.

Q: Can we see the question set?

A: We’re still revising the core questions, but it will include questions on the student academic experience derived from the National Student Survey (with additional qualitative comments by theme), mental health & wellbeing, questions on the SU, students’ preparedness for the future, student support and freedom of expression.

Q: How long will it take students to complete the survey?

A: We estimate it will take around 7 minutes for most students to complete each survey, depending on the detail they choose to go into in the qualitative questions.

Q: We’re a Welsh SU. Will the questions and promo be in Welsh?

A: Yes

Q: Is there a minimum response rate required to get results?

A: The commitment is to achieve a respondent sample size of 100 – and note that a response rate of at least 50 is needed to give conclusive insights.