Jisc: digital equity in transnational education, and what to capture in student feedback
Updated Apr 22, 2026
Digital equity problems in transnational education rarely show up first in headline scores. They surface in the student voice, but only if institutions can hear and interpret what students are saying across partners, sites, and countries. 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 it shows what universities need to capture if they want those problems to become visible early enough to fix. [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. It 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
For institutions, the practical takeaway is that digital equity is not a single technology issue. It spans access, confidence, support, and local context, which means student feedback needs to capture each of those layers if teams want an accurate picture.
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 barriers that determine whether learning is accessible day-to-day.
Second, make sure your feedback instruments can surface location-specific friction, which starts with clear student feedback survey design. 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 and become harder to fix, which is why teams also need a deliberate approach to benchmarking and triangulating student survey evidence.
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. That makes action more visible and reduces the risk that ownership gaps become part of the problem.
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 are easy to miss, especially when comments are split across partners and multiple local survey tools.
If you need to build evidence from open text across partners, sites, and delivery modes, explore Student Voice Analytics. It gives teams one reproducible way to analyse digital access and support themes, segment results, and see where barriers are concentrated. Then use our NSS open-text analysis methodology and the student comment analysis governance checklist to give that work a defensible workflow and stable language. 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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