Manchester Metropolitan University – NSS Survey

Feedback Festival

We disrupted the traditional National Student Survey (NSS) marketing model with a fun campaign and event that is helping Manchester Metropolitan University to embed a culture of student feedback for years to come.

Brief

After a challenging academic year for students, it was strategically and critically important for Manchester Met to get high engagement and completion rates for the 2021-2022 National Student Survey (NSS). They wanted to understand how well they had met the needs and expectations of their third-year students. And how they could further improve their learning experience.

Solution

We saw a bigger opportunity to connect with students. An opportunity to lead the way in the sector with a student-focused campaign that would inspire third-year students to complete the NSS. An opportunity to go beyond a one-off campaign to engage with students on all courses and year groups to start to create a collaborative culture of feedback on campus, so Manchester Met could gather important feedback and continually improve their student experience.

We created the ‘Feedback Festival’, a bold and highly ambitious idea that will become an annual event and make providing feedback more accessible to every student. We aimed to get every student excited about giving feedback at a fun event that would bring students together again after months of social distancing. We only had 22 working days to create everything from scratch! But together we delivered a campaign with real impact. We also communicated 23 ‘You Said, We Did’ messages to show how feedback leads to positive actions.

• On-campus marketing – this included large window vinyls on prominent buildings, railing banners, posters, pillar wraps, digital screens, pull-up banners, tabletalkers and giant flags. All in locations of high footfall, visible from main roads where possible.
• Digital campaign – this included targeted emails, a dedicated web page, social posts (including animated Gifs and Instagram Stories) and intranet reminder messages for students and staff.
• On-campus event – we held a two-day festival at the Business School for all students. As well as a stage, DJ and compare, there were carnival stalls, arcade machines, a tuktuk photobooth, giant games (Jenga & Connect 4), snacks, beanbags, balloons and iPads, so students could log on and complete the survey. Student Ambassadors were also on hand to talk to visitors and encourage them to share feedback.
• Academic Toolkit – we created a toolkit of resources to help academics promote survey completion to their final-year students.

Results

• The target for completing the survey within the first 6 weeks increased when compared to the same time the year before, and exceeded the set target.
• There was an increase in students completing the survey within the first 7 day window, which exceeded the set target.
• There was an incredible increase in page views to the NSS landing page during the survey window and time spent on the site also increased.
• The Feedback Festival is set to grow and grow to embed a culture of student feedback every day of the year.

Awards

2022 Heist Bronze Award – Best Engagement Campaign or Initiative

Judges Comments

“A bright, fun transformation project, well-integrated across all channels. There was a real understanding shown of what students engage with, which led to great outcomes.”