Advance HE and Explorance decode student feedback with AI magic

In an effort to gain deeper insights into postgraduate education, Advance HE has teamed up with Explorance MLY to analyse open comments from the 2024 Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey (PTES) and Postgraduate Research Experience Survey (PRES). 

The collaboration aims to improve the understanding and management of student feedback, addressing the evolving needs of higher education institutions worldwide.

The PTES, an international survey, focuses on the learning and teaching experiences of taught postgraduate students. Meanwhile, the PRES provides benchmark data from institutions across the UK and globally to enhance the postgraduate research experience. 

Together, these surveys collect feedback from tens of thousands of students, offering valuable data for educational institutions.

Explorance MLY, an AI-powered qualitative analysis tool, will be used to distill actionable insights from the large number of unstructured comments gathered.

John Atherton, VP Sales EMEA at Explorance, commented:

“We are delighted to be working with Explorance on this project. Their expert analysis of open comments in this year’s PTES and PRES will be a crucial element to support the work of our members and the HE sector. The purpose is to provide participating institutions with better insights from these surveys that will help them improve the student experience and using MLY will help them do this more quickly than ever before.

“It is fantastic to be able to partner with an organisation which is already embedded in the sector, and is supporting individual universities with similar work around qualitative analysis of student feedback. MLY is a highly impressive tool, and we are looking forward to the implementation of a successful collaboration.”

 Designed specifically for higher education, MLY's machine learning models can identify key recommendations and alerts from student feedback, enabling institutions to respond effectively. Through this partnership, over 100 participating universities will gain access to MLY's interactive dashboards.

Explorance MLY will focus on analysing open comments from key questions in both surveys. For PTES, these questions are: ‘What has been the one most positive aspect of your course so far?’ and ‘What one thing would most improve your experience of your course?’. 

For PRES, the questions are: ‘What has been the one most positive aspect of your research degree programme so far?’ and ‘What one thing would most improve your experience of your research degree programme?’.

Institutions opting in to this service will receive tailored dashboards that quantify and code responses against benchmarks, with filtering options by key demographics.

Jonathan Neves, Head of Business Intelligence and Surveys at Advance HE, stated:

“We are delighted to be working with Explorance on this project. Their expert analysis of open comments in this year’s PTES and PRES will be a crucial element to support the work of our members and the HE sector. The purpose is to provide participating institutions with better insights from these surveys that will help them improve the student experience and using MLY will help them do this more quickly than ever before."

“It is fantastic to be able to partner with an organisation which is already embedded in the sector and is supporting individual universities with similar work around qualitative analysis of student feedback. MLY is a highly impressive tool, and we are looking forward to the implementation of a successful collaboration.”