The Higher Education sector has seen an explosion in requests for extenuating circumstances in recent years. While we can pointto the Covid-19 pandemic as a contributory factor, demand remains high five years later. This is causing a huge amount of work for the teams evaluating these cases.
Firstly, the procedures themselves are a lot of work. For many universities, case volume is not decreasing as many hoped it would after the pandemic years of ‘no detriment’ policies and the like. Processes are often manual and not well supported by case management software solutions, although many universities are now making progress here and Academic Registry teams are finally getting their turn on the CRM roadmap.
Secondly, there’s dissatisfaction among both students and staff that EC and Appeals outcomes are perhaps not as consistent nor equitable as they should be – the more devolved decision-making is, the more this is an area of concern.
Finally (and of course there are many more reasons than the neat three shared here), there’s just a sense that things could be working better…but how? Below we share a few ways to start thinking about this.
Evaluation elements
Building on SUMS assignments and sector research from the past year, we suggest there are 10 elements a university should consider when evaluating ECs or Appeals. The first five elements are structural, likely to be dictated by the university at large and perhaps less easy to influence: guiding principles, student cohort, operating model, policy and systems. The other five elements are practical with perhaps more opportunity for improvement and innovation: process, evidence, decision makers, guidance and data.
In November, I presented a breakout session at the Academic Registrars’ Council (ARC) Annual Conference on this approach and asked attendees which three elements had the most scope for improvement at their institution. While all elements received votes (we wouldn’t want to be homogenous as a sector, would we?), the winners were systems, data and guidance.
What enthused me most about this result was guidance making the podium alongside technology. Attendees took to heart the suggestion that their communication could always be simpler and even presenting information in a different format might make a difference. This is an area where improvements can be made quickly and is also a great opportunity for co-creating with students and the Students’ Union.
Connect the dots and build a bigger picture
Fundamentally, if many students are submitting lots of ECs and Appeals, then this should be an indicator that something isn’t working, not just for them as individuals but perhaps across cohorts or the whole university. We encourage universities to make better use of data all the time and the more these processes are digitised then the more data they provide.
How might universities connect these data points to tell a story about their approach to assessment, about student retention or just simply their students’ life experiences? We explored this more holistic mindset in the breakout session Engage your core! Back to basics for improving student progression and satisfaction at the SUMS Annual Conference 2024.
Go upstream – talk to your students
Talking to students is the shift we need in this area of work, but not just for their evaluation of the EC or Appeals process – I’d place good money on the focus groups finding three things there: it was too complicated, took far too long, and “my friend with the same issue got a different outcome than me”.
Instead, universities need to better understand their students’ help-seeking behaviours and why they are not proactive as they could be. What does guidance need to say (how, when and where?) for students to identify their best support option as early as possible? How can assessment be better designed and scheduled? What’s needed so that for those circumstances that are unforeseeable – the intended “exception” in exceptional circumstances – students feel able to raise a retrospective flag post-exam rather than post-results?
How to get started
Here’s the bad news: there are no silver bullets for this work, nor is there a single best way to write policies nor manage these processes. The good news? Getting some of the basics right will go a long way in improving student and staff experiences. Here are a couple of questions to get you started:
- What could we improve about our student guidance to make it more accessible and help students submit timely and accurate EC or Appeal applications?
- When did we last update our stance on the types of evidence required? How can we define and agree when a student’s statement is enough and when we require third party documentation?
- How can we make decision making more consistent and equitable? Who should our decision makers be and why?
Our work will continue in this area with a focus on how universities might get students to engage more proactively with support, well ahead of assessment deadlines. We’ll be holding an event later in the year to discuss these issues so watch this space.
Here’s hoping we can report from upstream sometime soon.
