Teaching award nominations reveal what students value, and when praise rewards overwork

By Student Voice AI

Updated Apr 23, 2026

Positive student comments are easy to treat as a nice extra. That is a mistake, because praise shows what students think excellent teaching looks like, and where institutions may be quietly rewarding overwork. That is why Sophie Banks's Student Engagement in Higher Education Journal paper, "Lecturers on demand: Student perceptions within Student-Led Teaching Award nominations", matters for universities trying to use student voice as evidence rather than ceremony. By analysing award nominations instead of standard survey scores, the paper shows both what students recognise as excellent teaching and where that praise can drift into an expectation of limitless staff availability.

Context and research question

Student-Led Teaching Awards sit in an awkward place in higher education. They are often treated as a feel-good exercise, less rigorous than formal module evaluations and vulnerable to accusations of being popularity contests in student evaluations. Yet they are also a substantial source of free-text evidence, written in students' own words, about the teaching practices they notice enough to celebrate.

Banks asks a practical question that UK higher education teams should take seriously: what do these nominations actually tell us about how students perceive lecturers and teaching excellence? The study analysed Best Lecturer nominations from one UK teaching-oriented university with around 25,000 students. Across four academic years, from 2016/17 to 2019/20, 750 lecturers were nominated. Students wrote nominations in an open text box, and Banks used thematic network analysis to map the patterns in what they valued. That makes the dataset useful not because it captures every student view, but because it shows what students choose to reward when nobody tells them what matters.

Key findings

The paper makes a strong case that students can recognise and articulate teaching excellence. Rather than producing vague praise, the nominations touched every dimension of the UK Professional Standards Framework, which Banks uses in the discussion as a validation check. That matters because award nomination data is often dismissed as too sentimental or too noisy to analyse seriously. Here, it proves detailed enough to support real institutional learning.

"Students are able to recognise, evaluate, and verbalise teaching excellence."

Students described excellence through four broad lenses: students as consumers, students as learners, lecturers as academics, and lecturers as educators. The first two themes show that students do not speak with one voice about what university is for. Some nominations read almost like service reviews, stressing whether teaching felt worthwhile, dependable, and worth the money spent. Others focused more on intellectual development, confidence, future careers, and the sense that real learning had taken place. For UK teams, that is a reminder that the same positive comment set can contain very different expectations about the role of higher education, so analysis needs to separate those signals rather than flatten them into one satisfaction story.

The most valued teaching behaviours were not only about subject expertise. Students praised lecturers who were organised, clear communicators, well prepared, and able to use digital spaces effectively, including posting materials and guidance early on the VLE. They also valued attitudes and relationships: friendliness, approachability, positivity, and a visible commitment to students' success. That lines up closely with other recent evidence on what students really mean by teaching excellence: not charisma alone, but a combination of competence, care, and teaching that feels genuinely student-centred. For institutions, that makes nomination comments useful evidence of what strong teaching looks like in practice.

The most uncomfortable finding is that praise can reward unsustainable practice. Across the nominations, excellent lecturers were repeatedly described as always available, always positive, always responsive, and willing to do work beyond their formal duties. This is where the paper's title, "Lecturers on demand", matters. Student praise is valid evidence, but it can also normalise a model of excellent teaching built on emotional labour, boundaryless responsiveness, and unhealthy work-life balance, a pattern that echoes the impact of student voice on UK academics. That is the warning institutions should not ignore when they turn praise into policy.

Practical implications

For UK universities, the first implication is to treat award nominations as a real source of qualitative evidence, not just celebratory copy. They capture what students notice when teaching is working well, which formal evaluation forms often miss. If institutions analyse these comments systematically, alongside module evaluations and other free-text feedback, they get a fuller picture of what strong teaching looks like in practice. That gives quality teams richer evidence for enhancement, not just another shortlist for a ceremony.

Second, universities should rewrite teaching award criteria and judging guidance so they reward sustainable teaching, not permanent availability. As with student evaluations redesigned by staff and students together, the criteria need to separate genuinely effective teaching from signals that mostly reward intensity or constant access. Students clearly value responsiveness and care, but award panels should distinguish between thoughtful support and patterns that depend on staff answering late-night emails, absorbing distress without support, or stretching beyond reasonable workload boundaries. Criteria that recognise clarity, organisation, feedback quality, inclusion, and developmental support can keep student insight while reducing the risk of celebrating overwork. The benefit is fairer recognition that staff can realistically sustain.

Third, institutions should use positive student comments for staff development as carefully as they use critical comments. Banks's study shows that nominations contain actionable detail about communication, course design, learning atmosphere, digital resource use, and student motivation. Read well, they can inform mentoring, peer discussion, and teaching development just as much as standard evaluations do. That makes them a natural complement to work on how student evaluations help teaching improve when staff can discuss them. The developmental question is the same: what exactly should staff keep doing, change, or stop being expected to absorb alone? That gives teaching development work a clearer starting point.

Finally, universities should avoid treating award nominations as a complete picture of student opinion. This is one institution, one award category, and a positive subset of student voice by design. Nominations show what prompts students to celebrate, not what the wider cohort necessarily thinks in silence. Used on their own, they are too partial. Used alongside surveys, module comments, and other structured evidence, they become a valuable strand of insight. That gives leaders a more balanced reading of teaching quality and student expectations before they change criteria or make claims about excellence.

FAQ

Q: How should universities use teaching award nomination comments in practice?

A: Start by treating them as structured qualitative data. Code the comments against a small, explicit framework, using shared definitions such as those in the student feedback analysis glossary, then compare themes such as clarity, organisation, support, feedback, inclusion, inspiration, and availability with module evaluation comments and other survey evidence. That helps teams see which qualities are widely valued and which are being amplified by a smaller, more enthusiastic group. If institutions need a repeatable workflow, the NSS open-text analysis methodology offers a practical model for governed comment analysis.

Q: What are the methodological limits of this study?

A: This is a single-institution study of Best Lecturer nominations from one UK teaching-oriented university, covering 2016/17 to 2019/20. The data is valuable, but it is positively skewed by design: students are writing to praise, not to evaluate the full range of teaching experience. That means the paper is best used to understand what students celebrate and what those celebrations imply, not to estimate the prevalence of themes across the whole sector. The author also calls for similar work across varied UK institutions and more recent nomination cycles.

Q: What does this change about student voice more broadly?

A: It suggests that student voice is not only most useful when students complain. Praise carries evidence too. It tells universities what students think is worth repeating, what kinds of relationships make teaching feel high quality, and where institutions may be asking staff to perform care in unsustainable ways. If universities want a sharper definition of teaching excellence, they need to read positive comments as carefully as negative ones.

References

[Paper Source]: Sophie Banks "Lecturers on demand: Student perceptions within Student-Led Teaching Award nominations" DOI: 10.66561/sehej.v7i1.1384

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