Student narratives reveal the learning gains that grades miss
Updated Aug 08, 2026
Grades can show what students achieved. They cannot show how students think they changed as thinkers, problem-solvers, or citizens. Student narratives can. Anna Huvos, Tessa Leesen, John Gelissen and Alkeline van Lenning's Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education paper, "Mapping character and learning gain in higher education: the development of a qualitative instrument", tests a way to capture that wider development in students' own words. For UK universities using student voice to understand outcomes beyond attainment, the paper offers a useful warning: the question format shapes which parts of learning students can make visible.
Context and research question
Learning gain is often measured through grades, standardised tests, completion, or other outcomes that are easy to compare. These measures matter, but they say less about whether students have become more curious, resilient, open-minded, confident, or engaged with society. Those changes are harder to measure and easier to lose when institutional evidence is built around headline indicators.
The authors ask how a qualitative instrument can elicit and analyse undergraduate students' intellectual, performance, and civic learning gain, which they call the IPC framework. Intellectual qualities include curiosity and critical thinking. Performance qualities include perseverance, confidence, and resourcefulness. Civic qualities include empathy, tolerance, and social responsibility. The study leaves moral qualities outside the framework to avoid turning the interview into a prescriptive judgement about students' values.
The team interviewed 83 students from three Dutch universities, covering first-year students, second-year students, recent graduates, and four broad academic domains. Students were randomly selected from pseudonymised lists and invited to take part. Each face-to-face interview lasted between one and two hours. The instrument combined targeted questions with stories about educational high points, low points, turning points, intellectual challenges, civic contributions, and future hopes. First-year participants were also followed longitudinally, although the paper says there is not yet enough evidence for longitudinal conclusions.
Key findings
Targeted questions helped students name the qualities they valued and assess their own development. Students could explain what they thought made a good learner, thinker, researcher, or citizen, then reflect on whether those qualities had strengthened during university. Some described learning entirely new qualities. Others felt university had developed or revealed qualities they already possessed. The variation matters because it resists a single institutional story about how development is supposed to happen.
"targeted questions prompt students to articulate valued qualities, while narrative questions elicit personal stories that reveal developmental pathways and meaning-making processes."
Narrative questions revealed something different from direct self-report. Stories about high points, low points, and turning points showed qualities through events, decisions, and reflection. Curiosity, perseverance, resilience, and openness appeared in the way students described what happened, not only in the labels they chose for themselves. That is why student-defined concepts can strengthen later measurement: a response becomes more informative when students can explain what a quality means in their own experience.
The wording of a prompt changed the evidence it produced. When asked about an "intellectual challenge", many students discussed passing difficult exams, managing boredom, or finding motivation. The researchers had expected more stories about critical thinking, scientific integrity, or open-mindedness. Students understood the phrase through everyday study demands, which exposed a gap between the construct the researchers intended and the one participants heard.
Context mattered just as much for civic learning gain. Students often described civic contributions outside university, such as helping a stranger, volunteering, protesting, or organising charitable activity. These experiences took place during their studies but were rarely attributed to their course. The result does not prove that universities made no contribution. It shows that a broad question cannot establish that link unless it asks students to locate the experience within their education.
Rich evidence came with a substantial practical cost. Interviews took about 90 minutes on average, and the open coding and thematic analysis created considerable work. The authors suggest selecting the questions that matter most when the full instrument is impractical. They also acknowledge that both interviewing and coding depend on researcher interpretation. Depth is an advantage here, but it does not remove the need for a clear codebook, transparent decisions, and careful claims.
Practical implications
UK universities should pair direct questions with requests for a concrete example. Asking whether a course developed confidence or critical thinking gives students a category. Asking what happened, what changed, and which part of the course contributed gives teams evidence about the mechanism. Together, those answers are more useful than either a scale or an unstructured invitation on its own, because they connect a reported outcome to an experience that staff can examine.
Teams should also test whether students understand key terms as intended. Words such as intellectual challenge, resilience, citizenship, and personal development can carry different meanings across disciplines and cohorts. Cognitive testing or a small student co-design session can expose those differences before a survey launches. The benefit is practical: clearer prompts reduce the risk of coding a valid answer as off-topic when the real problem sits in the question.
Institutions do not need to reproduce a 90-minute interview in every survey. They can use selected prompts at points where reflection is most valuable, such as the end of first year, programme review, or graduation. A question such as "Which experience on your course most changed how you approach difficult problems, and what changed?" keeps the focus on development while leaving room for an unexpected answer. Repeating a stable prompt over time can then show how students' accounts change without claiming that one comment proves individual growth.
Finally, universities should preserve context when analysing responses at scale. The study used open coding and thematic analysis, with many codes based on the literature and others developed from students' language. A comparable institutional process needs documented categories, traceable examples, and room for themes the original framework did not predict. The NSS open-text analysis methodology shows how consistent coding can support comparison, while the student comment analysis governance checklist helps teams keep interpretation, privacy, and accountability visible. That makes qualitative evidence easier to use without pretending it is free from judgement.
FAQ
Q: How can a university apply this study without running 90-minute interviews with every student?
A: Select one or two questions tied to a specific decision, then pair a targeted prompt with a request for an example. A programme might ask which quality students developed most, what experience contributed, and what the institution could change. Pilot the wording with students before using it across a cohort, and keep a smaller interview sample for deeper follow-up.
Q: Can this instrument prove that university caused a student's character development?
A: No. The study captures students' perceptions and interpretations, and some stories concerned experiences outside their course or university. Its cross-sectional evidence can show how students describe development, not isolate institutional causation. The longitudinal element may support stronger accounts of change later, but the authors state that there is not yet enough data for longitudinal conclusions.
Q: What does this paper change about student voice practice?
A: It treats students as interpreters of learning, not only respondents to predefined outcomes. Universities still need structured measures, but narrative evidence can show what students think changed, which experiences mattered, and where institutional language does not match lived experience. That gives quality and Student Experience teams a better basis for deciding what to investigate or improve next.
References
[Paper Source]: Anna Huvos, Tessa Leesen, John Gelissen and Alkeline van Lenning "Mapping character and learning gain in higher education: the development of a qualitative instrument" DOI: 10.1080/02602938.2026.2681691
Request a walkthrough
Book a free Student Voice Analytics demo
See all-comment coverage, sector benchmarks, and reporting designed for OfS quality and NSS requirements.
- All-comment coverage with HE-tuned taxonomy and sentiment.
- Versioned outputs with TEF-ready reporting.
- Benchmarks and BI-ready exports for boards and Senate.
UK-hosted · No public LLM APIs · Same-day turnaround