The scope of the case study in context

The inclusion of two institutions ensured a richness of data and provided

opportunities to consider the differences in practice and experiences across two locations. Two universities located in the English midlands were selected based

both on geographical convenience and on access to these institutions. The pilot work was carried out in the Post-92 institution and the main study at the Russell Group institution. This enabled exploratory research to take place during the pilot phase of research without influencing the participants who later took part in the main study. Conducting the pilot also enabled some comparison between institutional mechanisms, and provided a basis for the development of working hypotheses and themes which could then be explored in the main study.

3.3.1.1 Case study 1 – Post-92 institution

The pilot institution is located in a large city and was formed from a number of specialist colleges that had existed previously as standalone institutions in the city. The institution became a polytechnic in the 1970s and in 1992 was awarded

university status. The university operates across several campuses and offers a range of different courses in art and design, English, technology, engineering, teaching, social sciences, law and healthcare. Alongside a range of full-time

courses, the institution has a large portfolio of part-time study options. Of the 23000 students studying at the university, almost half of the full-time students are from the local area and a large percentage of these are from ethnic minorities. Around 3500 students are postgraduate.

3.3.1.2 Case study 2 – Russell Group institution

The case study that was selected for the main study was a large, single campus institution. Formed in the 1960s, the institution has around 23000 students, of which around 13000 are undergraduate and 10000 are postgraduate. The majority of students are full-time. The institution is organised into four faculties - Arts, Medicine,

Science and Social Sciences. A range of traditional academic subjects such as chemistry, English and maths, as well as those designed to prepare students for a particular profession, such as business, medicine and engineering, are all taught at the institution. As a research-intensive institution, a considerable amount of the university’s funding is gained through research activity.

The formal student voice mechanisms at each institution were managed by the students’ union, headed by elected student officers, in collaboration with university management. Each institution ran a number of internal student satisfaction surveys for students in all years of study, along with the NSS for students in their final year. Module evaluations did not take place in a standard format in all departments although they were prevalent. At the Post-92 institution there was a move to standardise module evaluation processes during the period of study. Student

representative committees are a requirement for all courses and the students’ union at each institution supported the election of students at the start of each academic year. At each institution the central learning and teaching department was also leading a number of projects that sought to develop collaborative relationships between students and staff (at the Post-92 institution) and to engage undergraduate students in research (at the Russell Group).

In order to understand the extent to which practices and ideologies differed depending on particular subject disciplines, students and academics from two contrasting subject areas in each institution were asked to participate. This

approach was taken in order to support the development of a rich picture which took account of different subject disciplines. Disciplines are often based on different

theoretical and intellectual principles and may be taught differently (for example, science subjects are often taught through lab work, while arts often have a greater emphasis on seminars and group discussion). Booth (1997) suggests that students who select certain disciplines within higher education share similar goals and characteristics, so by contrasting two disciplines in each institution it was possible to explore these differences.

The NSS provides the largest data set of higher education student opinion in the UK, and levels of participation in the NSS from students in different subject areas informed the courses selected as cases (APPENDIX B: NSS ANALYSIS FOR SUBJECT DISCIPLINE SELECTION). The national and local NSS was considered for different subject disciplines, and the subjects selected were those that had reasonably high levels of participation, but were neither the best nor worst. On a pragmatic level, it was also important to select subjects that were represented at both the Post-92 and Russell Group institutions in order to enable the research to be replicated for the pilot and main study. The subject areas of English and engineering were chosen as the case studies for the study. Both nationally and locally, English had a slightly higher response rate in the NSS than engineering. Additional factors considered in the selection of case studies included a desire to consider an arts and a science discipline, in order to explore the participation of students in different subject areas, and to include a traditional academic subject and a professional discipline. At each institution, the English department contained a higher proportion of female students, and the Engineering department, a higher proportion of male students. However, in the pilot work, recruiting students in each

of these subject areas proved difficult and as a result, students from different subject disciplines were involved at the development stage.

Following the pilot interviews, the decision was taken to focus only on

undergraduate student voice mechanisms. The rationale for this decision was that the majority of Government and higher education institution policy relating to student voice has focused on the undergraduate group. While postgraduate students are surveyed through the Postgraduate Taught and Postgraduate

Research Experience surveys, the results of these are not made widely available to the public, nor do the results receive notable media coverage. Approaches to

funding for postgraduate courses have remained relatively stable over the period of the study and as such there has been less attention paid, in recent years, to student voice at the postgraduate level, both within institutions and externally. This is not to say that there is not a place for consideration of student voice mechanisms beyond that of the undergraduate population, but that the undergraduate group offered the greatest scope for consideration in this study. A final reason for not including postgraduate students, in this study, is that it may be premature to study

postgraduate mechanisms at this particular point, given that this group may well be influenced to a far greater extent within the next 5-10 years as the postgraduate population becomes increasingly composed of individuals who have experienced the new undergraduate funding regime.

In each case study, student voice mechanisms were considered at the macro (government and university policies and practice), meso (senior manager

academics, interpreting, understanding and practicing in student voice

mechanisms) in order to develop a full and holistic picture. In addition, the student voice mechanism typology (Table 1, Chapter 1) was utilised to ensure that each study focused on a range of official, unofficial, collective and individual activities. This enabled the development of a richer understanding of the complex picture of student voice mechanisms.