Designing participation that students can use

This week, Dr Stuart Grey looks at how universities can design student voice around usable space, meaningful expression, a real audience, and visible influence.

The episode considers a Manchester Metropolitan University case study applying Lundy's participation model, a scoping review of how higher education research defines belonging, Leicester's NSS 2026 results, and the consistency questions raised by Swansea University's Quality Enhancement Review.

In This Episode

• Why adding a feedback channel does not necessarily widen participation.
• How space, voice, audience, and influence provide a practical audit for student voice.
• What a reflective departmental case study can and cannot demonstrate.
• Why belonging measures need definitions grounded in student experience.
• How open comments can explain what students recognise as visible action.
• Why strong partnership structures still need consistent assessment and support rules.

Research

• Student voice gets stronger when participation is designed, not assumed
• Belonging surveys are stronger when students define what belonging means

Across the Sector

• Leicester's NSS 2026 results show why student voice gains need visible follow-through
• Swansea's QER says strong student partnership still needs more consistent assessment and support rules

Practical Implication

Take one existing student voice route and identify where students can contribute, how they can express a view, who is expected to respond, and what evidence will show that their contribution had influence.

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Transcript

Hello, and welcome to Student Voice Weekly. I'm Dr Stuart Grey, founder of Student Voice.

This week, I want to talk about how participation is designed.

Universities already have surveys, course representatives, committees, focus groups, and informal conversations. The question is whether students can actually use those routes, whether the right people hear what they say, and whether their contribution has any visible influence.

Today, I'd like to look at a practical framework for testing that.

The lead paper in this week's newsletter is a reflective case study from the Department of Social Care and Social Work at Manchester Metropolitan University. Zinnia Mitchell-Smith, Ffion Evans, and Rachael Rooke describe how the department adapted Laura Lundy's model of participation.

The model has four parts: space, voice, audience, and influence.

Space means students have a genuine opportunity to form and express a view.

Voice means they have ways to communicate that view which work for them.

Audience means somebody with the ability and responsibility to respond is actually listening.

And influence means the contribution is considered seriously, with some visible account of what followed.

That sounds straightforward. But it is a useful test because many student voice systems are much stronger on the first part than the other three. A survey link creates a space of sorts. A committee seat creates an opportunity to speak. Neither guarantees that the route is usable, that the evidence reaches the right audience, or that students see a response.

The Manchester Metropolitan case did not remove surveys or student representation. It added routes around them: timetabled discussion, tutorials, online Padlets, drop-ins, reverse mentoring, student networks, and paid partnership work.

The important design choice was to bring participation closer to the places where students already were.

That matters because apparently open opportunities can still favour particular students.

A live meeting favours people who can attend at that time, process the discussion quickly, and feel comfortable disagreeing in front of staff and other students. An optional event favours people with spare time. A formal paper may favour students who already understand university language and committee processes.

I still teach part-time at the University of Glasgow, and this is recognisable in everyday teaching. Some students will raise a question immediately. Some will wait until the end. Some will write afterwards. And some will only say what was difficult when there is a structured prompt that makes it reasonable to do so.

Those are not simply different levels of engagement. They are different conditions for participation.

So the practical issue is to make sure student voice does not depend on confidence in one particular setting.

The Manchester paper is a practice account from one department. It is not a controlled evaluation, and it does not prove that adopting this model will improve student outcomes or N S S scores. The authors report that their approach coincided with stronger student voice measures, but they are appropriately cautious about causation.

Its value is more diagnostic. It gives a course team four questions to ask of every participation route.

Where is the space? How can students express themselves? Who is the audience? And how will influence be made visible?

The second paper in the newsletter applies a similar challenge to belonging.

Tracii Ryan and colleagues reviewed three hundred and fifty-three higher education publications. Just over ninety per cent used an existing definition of belonging. Only just over twelve per cent used student data to develop the definition.

That gap matters before we get anywhere near a dashboard.

If an institution asks students whether they feel that they belong, the answer could involve peer relationships, academic confidence, teaching, assessment, physical space, digital systems, safety, recognition, or whether the institution feels designed with them in mind.

A single score can move without telling us which of those experiences changed.

The review found that student-derived definitions were multi-dimensional and dynamic. Belonging was not confined to friendship or campus atmosphere. It included academic, social, physical, digital, institutional, and structural experiences.

This is a conceptual review, rather than a causal study or a sector benchmark. Its practical contribution is clarity. Before universities set a belonging target, they need to know what their questions are actually measuring.

One sensible approach is to retain a small number of stable scaled items, so change can be tracked, and add an open prompt asking what is helping or hindering belonging now.

That combination matters. The scale provides continuity. The comments tell you whether the issue is peer connection, academic legitimacy, an inaccessible space, an assessment process, or something else.

Across the sector, Leicester's N S S results provide a useful example of visible follow-through.

More than three thousand, one hundred Leicester students responded in twenty twenty-six. The university reported improvement across six of the seven themes, and a third year in the top twenty of Universities UK providers for listening to and acting on feedback.

The useful part is not the ranking on its own. Leicester linked the result to partnership with students and its Students' Union.

That creates a question for other institutions. Can students see a line between what they raised, who considered it, and what changed?

A good provider-level result still needs local interpretation. A theme score cannot tell a faculty whether students are noticing clearer course organisation, better academic support, a stronger representative system, or simply more communication about decisions already taken.

That is where comments are really useful. They help explain what students recognise as action.

Swansea's recent Quality Enhancement Review adds the other side of the argument.

The review was positive overall. Q A A commended Swansea's curriculum transformation, student partnership, and employability work. But it also recommended clearer and more consistent extenuating-circumstances guidance, and identified further work on consistency around permitted generative A I use in assessment.

This is a Welsh review in a specific institutional context, so it should not be presented as a new UK-wide rule.

But the practical signal travels well. Strong partnership structures can sit alongside inconsistent student experience.

An institution may have a policy, a representative system, and evidence of curriculum change. Students can still receive different messages about deadlines, evidence requirements, or acceptable A I use from different modules and Schools.

The key thing is that consistency becomes part of student voice evidence. If the same confusion appears in module comments, representative discussions, support contacts, and complaints, that is no longer a small communication problem. It is an institutional pattern that needs an owner.

If I were analysing comments across these topics, I would avoid one broad category called engagement.

I would separate comments about access, expression, audience, influence, and consistency.

Access comments tell you whether students could use the route at all. Was it timetabled? Was it accessible? Did it require attendance at an extra meeting?

Expression comments tell you whether students felt able to explain the issue in their own terms, including through written or asynchronous routes.

Audience comments tell you whether students believed the right person heard them.

Influence comments describe what happened next, including whether staff explained why a requested change was or was not possible.

And consistency comments show where the same policy or process feels different across courses, modules, or services.

For belonging, I would add another layer. Is the comment mainly social, academic, physical, digital, institutional, or structural?

Those distinctions make the analysis more useful because they point towards different action. A missing route needs participation design. An unclear response needs communication. Inconsistent guidance needs governance. A belonging concern may need changes to teaching or assessment, rather than another social event.

So the practical conclusion this week is to take one existing student voice route and map it against four questions.

Where is the space for students to contribute?

What different ways can they express a view?

Who is expected to listen and respond?

And what evidence will show that their contribution had influence?

Then make sure the comments are analysed with enough detail to show where the process is working, and where it is losing people.

The data is not the finish line. The useful part is the conversation and the decision that follow.

That is it for this week.

The full research summaries and sector links are in Student Voice Weekly. You can subscribe at studentvoice.ai if you would like the newsletter each Friday.

And, if this episode was useful, please share it with a colleague working on student experience, teaching, surveys, or quality.