Jisc: digital equity in transnational education, and what to capture in student feedback

By Student Voice AI

Updated Mar 02, 2026

On 18 February 2026, Jisc published a blog post on delivering digital equity in transnational education, drawing on its Global education and technology research with UK higher education providers. We are highlighting it because digital equity issues often surface first in student voice data, and because transnational and partner provision makes it harder to hear, interpret, and act on those signals consistently. [Jisc blog post]

What Jisc found about digital equity in transnational education

Jisc reports it worked with 19 UK higher education providers, running an initial survey with 2,629 participants (students and staff), then follow-up focus groups with 43 students and 49 staff. Jisc also links to supporting case studies and a report from the work.

The blog pulls out several practical implications that matter directly for student experience teams and quality professionals trying to use student feedback across campuses, partners, and countries. In summary, Jisc highlights that digital equity includes:

Access to devices and reliable internet connectivity
Access to, and confidence using, the digital tools students and staff need
The need to monitor and address the digital experience, including making sure students and staff can access support when problems occur
The need to factor in time zones, language, and cultural contexts, especially where local partners deliver in-country support

As James Clay, higher education and student experience lead at Jisc, puts it:

"Digital equity is about ensuring all learners can access and use digital technologies effectively, regardless of their location or background."

What this means for institutions collecting student feedback

First, treat digital equity as a student voice measurement area, not only an IT service issue. If your students are studying through partner delivery, at a distance, or across time zones, standard “satisfaction” questions can miss the practical constraints that determine whether learning is accessible day-to-day.

Second, make sure your feedback instruments can surface location-specific friction. In practice, that means using open-text prompts that let students name the barrier in their own words (for example, connectivity, platform access, digital confidence, time zone clashes, local support availability), and then segmenting results by site, partner, cohort, and mode. Without that segmentation, digital equity problems can disappear into an average.

Third, close the loop in a way that works across partners. Where support is shared between a UK provider and an in-country partner, students can experience unclear ownership. A simple discipline helps: publish who owns which part of the digital experience (platforms, helpdesk, study skills support, accessibility adjustments), then use “you said, we did” updates to show how feedback triggered fixes, and where issues still sit in the backlog.

How student feedback analysis connects

At Student Voice AI, we often see digital equity themes embedded in wider comments about teaching organisation, communication, and support. When institutions rely on manual reading alone, those signals can be missed, especially when comments are split across partners and multiple local survey tools.

If you are building evidence from open text, start with a defensible workflow and stable language. Useful references are our NSS open-text analysis methodology and the student comment analysis governance checklist. For adjacent reading on inclusion and representativeness in student voice systems, see our summary on non-response bias in student evaluations.

FAQ

Q: What should institutions do now?

A: If you deliver transnational education or partner provision, review whether your student feedback questions reliably capture digital access, tool confidence, and support availability. Then segment the results by location and partner so issues are visible and owned.

Q: Who does Jisc’s digital equity work apply to, and what is the scope?

A: The blog focuses on transnational education and draws on Jisc work with UK higher education providers. It covers both student and staff digital experiences, including how local context and partner delivery shape what support is needed.

Q: What is the broader implication for student voice?

A: Digital equity issues can be widespread but unevenly distributed. Student voice systems need to make those differences measurable, so institutions can intervene where barriers are highest and then show whether the experience improves for the affected cohorts.

References

[Jisc]: "Delivering digital equity in transnational education"
Published: 2026-02-18

[Jisc]: "Global education and technology: insights into transnational student and staff digital experiences"
Published: 2025-10-09

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