The Student Voice Weekly

Student Voice Weekly, episode 35, with Dr Stuart Grey. Dr Stuart Grey explores how school and programme reports connect local survey comments with institution-wide analysis. He explains the role of organisational information, consistent categories and sentiment, reading the original comments, and bringing local interpretation back into institutional decisions. Chapters - 00:00 - Getting feedback t...

The comments your search words leave out Dr Stuart Grey starts with a familiar workflow: finding relevant student comments in an Excel survey export. He compares the useful text-search and filtering controls in that workflow with the Student Voice review tools, explaining what meaning-based discovery, precise searches and sentence highlighting add to an institution-wide investigation. In this epis...

What makes feedback useful to students? Dr Stuart Grey explores what our NSS comment data says about feedback: its prominence, changes in tone and differences between disciplines. He connects those findings with an institution-wide review of timing, clarity and opportunities to use advice, alongside a brief research finding about perceived fairness. In this episode: - Feedback appears in 13.8% of...

What getting support asks of students Dr Stuart Grey explores how institution-wide analysis of existing survey comments can show the work students do to get support. This week's research on disabled graduates and participatory PhDs leads into practical questions about service data, engagement measures and how universities review a change. In this episode - Keeping appreciation for helpful staff an...

Can student partners disagree? Dr Stuart Grey explores how student partners experience disagreement and uncertainty, and why the scope of an invitation to contribute deserves attention. Two qualitative studies lead into practical questions about decisions, responsibilities and whose experience appears in a partnership review. In this episode: - Following a student suggestion that was declined, inc...

What useful student support looks like Dr Stuart Grey explores what students mean when they say they feel supported. Research on international students and doctoral expectations provides a starting point for distinguishing practical help, emotional support and the experiences people hoped for. Jisc's account of support conversations leads into practical questions about how universities can examine...

Dr Stuart Grey asks two connected questions: what can student feedback tell us, and who had a workable opportunity to give it? Episode 29 brings together teaching ratings, housing insecurity and the practical costs of taking part in student voice. In this episode - Matching the evidence to the decision a course team needs to make. - Keeping students' circumstances visible when comments move betwee...

QAA and Swansea University have published a practical approach to using generative AI for a first pass over free-text student survey comments. Dr Stuart Grey examines the safeguards author Sophie Leslie recommends and asks when universities need a more reproducible analytical foundation. The episode explains why Student Voice AI separates deterministic machine-learning categorisation and sentiment...

This week, Dr Stuart Grey asks what happens after universities collect student feedback. Drawing on new research into student-centred culture and longitudinal evidence about student engagement, Stuart explains why feedback needs a clear route to the people who can act-and why comments provide context that scores alone cannot. In This Episode - Why collecting student feedback is only the beginning....

This week, Dr Stuart Grey asks where responsibility for academic stress actually sits. Drawing on a national study of more than 19,000 undergraduates and research into how early-career academics use student evaluations, Stuart explores how universities can distinguish worthwhile academic challenge from avoidable pressure created by course design. In This Episode - Why academic stress cannot sit wi...

This week, Dr Stuart Grey steps away from the usual research and sector-news format to talk directly about data security and provenance. Prompted by Student Voice's recent move to serve Irish institutions from an EU data centre, Stuart explains how regional residency and model provenance work together. UK customer data remains entirely in the UK, while Irish customer data is processed in the EU. C...

This week, Dr Stuart Grey asks who gets to decide what universities ask students in the first place. Drawing on papers he read this week, his own teaching, and Student Voice's national NSS comment analysis, Stuart explores what changes when students help frame the question, produce the evidence, and interpret what it means. In This Episode - Why student-led consultation can change the quality of w...

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 ra...

This week, Dr Stuart Grey looks at the difference between students participating in teaching and feeling able to influence it. The episode examines a study of 1,713 final-year students in Colombia, where expressive voice accounted for a modest part of the relationship between collaborative learning and academic achievement. It then considers research on care and engagement, Sheffield Hallam's move...

This week, Dr Stuart Grey focuses on QAA's response to NSS 2026 and what universities need to do once the results-day headlines have passed. The episode looks at internal enhancement, weaker experiences among part-time, apprenticeship, and disabled students, the cost of taking part in student engagement, and the support student representatives need to contribute meaningfully to quality assurance....

This week, Dr Stuart Grey focuses on NSS 2026 results day: the national headlines, the disabled student gaps that still need action, and what it takes to turn large volumes of student comments into usable evidence quickly. The episode also looks at what Student Voice AI produced for NSS customers on results day, why sentence-level labels matter, and how recent research should shape the way univers...

This week, Dr Stuart Grey starts with Daniel Robson and Helena Lim's Wonkhe piece on King's College London, where the NSS comment analysis work was delivered in collaboration with Student Voice AI. The episode discusses why faster comment analysis matters only when it preserves enough detail for human review, academic judgement, and visible action while universities still have time to respond. In...

This week, Dr Stuart Grey discusses why universities need sharper AI-related student feedback questions, especially as guidance moves from broad policy statements into modules, assessments, and local teaching practice. The episode covers AI attitude survey design, Jisc's latest AI guidance and governance work, student mini-publics, and how universities can separate AI comments by usefulness, clari...

This week, Dr Stuart Grey discusses why students judge staff AI use through care, trust, fairness, and visible human judgement, not only through technical competence or speed. The episode covers new research on student perceptions of AI-using teachers, evidence on AI detector false positives, Bath's survey architecture, QAA's assessment and feedback roadshow, and a practical way to separate studen...

This week, Dr Stuart Grey discusses AI legitimacy and student voice evidence: why students judge AI through trust, anxiety, fairness, and the visibility of human judgement, not only through speed or technical performance. The episode covers student feelings about generative AI, feedback dialogue, Cambridge evidence on AI marking, Jisc's formative feedback pilot, and practical ways to separate comm...

This week, Dr Stuart Grey discusses time poverty and student voice evidence: how low-income students lose study time through work, travel, administration, money pressure, and systems that assume spare capacity. The episode covers time poverty as widening participation evidence, fair process in student evaluation systems, Cardiff's QER recommendation on student voice mechanisms, Advance HE's TEF an...

This week, Dr Stuart Grey discusses belonging and student voice evidence: why international wellbeing, friendship formation, and collaborative study are shaped by ordinary academic contact rather than slogans or one-off events. The episode covers everyday community engagement, friendship and collaborative study, DfE franchise arrangements guidance, Jisc's new "None of the above" option, and practi...

This week, Dr Stuart Grey discusses AI feedback and student voice evidence: how universities can use AI feedback without removing teacher judgement, and how assessment evidence connects with student value, belonging and attendance. The episode covers AI feedback design, paid student voice roles, QAA Scotland's review of awarding evidence, HEPI's latest findings on student value and belonging, and...

This week, Dr Stuart Grey discusses feedback evidence: how universities move beyond headline scores and into the student comments, context and action trail underneath them. The episode covers feedback literacy, OfS scrutiny of assessment feedback, NSS 2026 preparation, and why student feedback comments need to be grouped by the kind of action they require. In This Episode - Why assessment and feed...

This week, Dr Stuart Grey discusses belonging, partnership and timing: why welcome week is not enough to be a university's belonging strategy. The episode covers research on first-year introduction week, student voice as partnership, Portsmouth's assessment regulation changes and Westminster's mid-module check-ins. In This Episode - Why welcome week mainly strengthens peer belonging, not staff bel...