Year on year, the Union recognise survey responses as a crucial aspect of its wider work around improving education for undergraduate and postgraduate students. One of these surveys includes the bi-annual PTES survey which looks to test the thoughts and views of all postgraduate taught students about the education they receive.
The response is primarily written by the Deputy President (Education) with support from the Education and Welfare staff team. This year, we welcomed input from members of the Graduate Student Union who co-authored the response. Academic reps are also instrumental in helping us diagnose issues that are less clear from the PTES data; this phase of work is carried out as exit interviews with academic reps between the release of PTES data and the compilation of our final response.
The PTES is divided into different sections including Teaching and Learning, Engagement, Assessment and Feedback, Dissertation and Project, Organisation and Management, Resources and Services and Skills Development. The data acquired provides us with oversight of the shortfalls of aspects of postgraduate taught education, such as quality and timeliness of feedback, as well as glimpses of good practise. Following the response being produced, our role is to then work with Reps and students to recommend to departments how we feel they can improve certain areas of their postgraduate education which we present as a set of recommendations in our response document.
The response document is widely disseminated around College and departments, including through Faculty Education Committees which serve to oversee the development of PTES departmental action plans. We also look to share the PTES response with students and academic reps to offer them leverage in their efforts with bringing about positive changes to their postgraduate taught programmes.
We invite you to read our 2016 PTES Response and to involve yourself with any activities related to our response creation in the future. You can also find our responses to other surveys on the same page, including the 2016 National Student Survey (NSS) Response.
If you have any questions or queries regarding this then please don't hesitate to get in touch at dpe@ic.ac.uk
