General student surveys

Overview

Student surveys provide the University with important feedback to assist in the planning, delivery and improvement of services available to students across the University.

This page provides information to ensure that surveys seeking to acquire student feedback on the provision of University services are appropriately planned, designed and implemented, thereby assisting:

  • Coordination of the timing and quantity of student surveys, thus managing the student survey load and mitigating student survey fatigue;
  • Avoidance of excessive and unnecessary student surveying through the provision of shared data and survey analysis;
  • Quality assurance on the questioning, sampling, delivery, data collection, privacy and storage of surveys; and
  • Identification of surveys where Human Research Ethics approval is required.

Scope

The Student Survey Policy and Procedure applies to all Federation University Australia staff distributing a new or existing general student survey to students studying at Federation University Australia.

A general student survey is regarded as a survey where the purpose is to generate feedback on the provision of a service to students. The Policy and procedure is applicable to all surveys where the survey is distributed to the student body or cohort of the student body, including by post, email, social media, learning management system, face-to-face or distributed by hand-out. Student surveys conducted by a third party on behalf of the University are also included.

Student surveys which are governed by other University polices and procedures include:

  • Student evaluations of learning and teaching are governed by the Student Evaluation of Learning and Teaching Policy and Procedure; and
  • Research surveys requiring Human Research Ethics approval are primarily governed by the Applying for Human Research Ethics Procedure;

The Procedure does not apply to student surveys:

  • that are conducted as part of the Australian Government Quality Indicators for Learning and Teaching (QILT) survey suite;
  • optional feedback forms provided in a static location, e.g. on a service counter; and
  • that are marketing surveys targeted at prospective students, i.e. students that are not actively studying or have not accepted offers to study at a Federation University Campus.

Please note: Qualtrics is the internal survey tool used at the University. Read more about Qualtrics here.

Important information and links

Timeline

Please allow 10 days for the Survey Coordinator to respond to your survey proposal form. You should also allow enough time to make any changes needed before sending the survey live for student feedback.

Important information:  To ensure robust response rates for our regulatory surveys (ie: eVALUate, QILT), general student surveys will be kept at a minimum (max 2) during scheduled regulatory survey periods. It would be best practice to submit your survey proposal form well in advance. Please check the eVALUate and QILT web pages for the current year schedule.

Please note:

All  feedback submitted through completion of this survey is collected in accordance with the University’s Information Privacy Policy and is regarded as confidential. All data collected is de-identified before being compiled into any report prepared for consideration and decision-making within the University.  Information which has been de-identified cannot be retrieved or modified.

Contact us

Contact the Co-ordinator Student Engagement & Experience Surveys for further information and assistance by emailing surveys@federation.edu.au or phone + 61 3 5327 8083.