In early 2025, the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Education and Students) and the Strategy Portfolio partnered to engage nearly 100 Unit of Study Coordinators across the University. The goal? To better understand what’s working—and what’s not—when it comes to improving the student experience. As educators across the university prepare to receive their 2025 USS scores, we share this information in hopes that others find these lessons useful.
This initiative is part of a broader, long-term commitment to elevate the University of Sydney’s standing in student experience across the Group of Eight (Go8). With an ambitious target to lead the Go8 by 2032, the University is taking a data-informed, people-centred approach to change.
To understand what unit coordinators believe students value most in the learning experience, we spoke with 93 educators from a diverse range of faculties. A subset of these unit coordinators showed substantial improvements in student experience scores in the Unit of Study Survey (USS). With these, we asked educators what factors they attributed to the increase. In this post, we share the most frequent themes in academics’ comments and small-scale but effective approaches that other educators can adopt to their own units of study.
What’s Driving Improvement
Unit of Study Coordinators whose USS scores significantly improved over the year perceived the following key drivers for this increase:
1) Assessment and Feedback Changes
Most frequently, a third (33%) of the coordinators described modifying assessment structures to improve learning outcomes and reduce stress for students. These coordinators changed their assessment processes to provide clear expectations and timely and personalised feedback. These changes can often be small, but with large impact. For example, Mary-Ann Winkelmes and others (2016, 2019) offer the Transparency in Learning and Teaching (TILT) framework, with three small steps to improve clarity of assessments:
- Clearly state the purpose or goals of the assessment
- Explain the task, or what you expect students to do and how they should complete it
- Provide criteria, or models of how students can be successful at the assignment, such as a rubric or examples of past student work (which students have given you permission to share)
2) Organisational Structure
Next most frequent, a little over a quarter of Unit Coordinators refined their unit to offer a tighter organisational structure, to avoid overlaps with other units, and to offer students a logical narrative for the role of the unit in the curriculum. Organisation is a key driver behind student experience surveys (Benton & Cashin, 2014; Murray, 2007), so attunement to organisation can be particularly helpful in driving up USS scores. While some of the changes that these unit coordinators made were quite significant (e.g., curricular realignment), research suggests that small teaching adjustments can work just as well. Teaching behaviours that are associated with student perceptions of organisation include (Murray):
- Providing an outline or agenda for each class
- Noting when you are transitioning from one topic to another
- Noting sequence and connections, or highlighting how each topic fits into the unit as a whole
- Periodically stopping to review (or ask students to review) key topics
3) Engaging Teaching Methods
A little less than a quarter (24%) of unit of study coordinators attributed student engagement to the uptick in their scores. Coordinators described how they revised content and shifted from a lecture-based approach to interactive methods. Research supporting the use of active learning is so compelling that some have suggested it is unethical for instructors to continue to use a purely lecture-based approach (Freeman et al., 2014). Fortunately, “active learning” describes a broad toolbox of strategies from which educators can choose, even those that take up very little class time, such as Mentimeter polls, Padlet writing exercises, and minute papers.
4) Other Changes
In addition to the top three enhancements described above, coordinators who significantly improved their scores described several other alterations, albeit not as frequently. These changes included adjustments to communications and student support, including providing timely responses to student enquiries. Some also made changes to the teaching team to provide more coordination between members or to enhance the experience and qualifications of coordinators, tutors, or lecturers.
Things Students Value Most
All coordinators were also asked to comment on what they perceive students most value in their university experience. Because research suggests that many of these elements correlated with student experience surveys, these teaching behaviours are also important to consider.
1) Clarity
Paralleling other research on key influences in student experience surveys (Braskamp & Ory, 1994; Murray, 2007), most frequently, coordinators identified that students place the highest value on clarity—particularly around assessments and expectations. Over a quarter of coordinators (26%) noted that students highly value clear communication regarding assessments, expectations, and unit structure.
What can educators do to improve clarity? Canadian educational researcher Harry Murray (2007) studied observable teaching behaviours that are associated with this dimension of feedback. His research suggests that helpful small behaviours to consider include:
- Writing key terms on a board (or slide)
- Giving multiple examples of a concept
- Suggesting practical applications of an idea
2) Support and Care
Over one in five coordinators (22%) reported that it was important for students to feel heard and valued as individuals. Indeed, analysis of the University of Sydney’s USS results shows that student sense of belonging is a key driver. Coordinators noted steps they took to offer a care-full classroom, including providing personalised feedback, responding to queries in a timely manner, and knowing student names. While learning names can be particularly challenging in large units of study, one study finds that instructors do not actually need to memorise students’ names for the students to perceive that they are known (Cooper et al., 2016). Instead, educators’ use of name tents — such as a simple folded piece of paper — helped students feel like an academic knew them well. Motivational interventions are also helpful for units – large and small – to develop students’ sense of belonging.
3) Other Valued Characteristics
Unit Coordinators also named elements similar to those named in the above section on increased USS scores. These additional factors included student preferences for active learning, attempts to bridge theory and practice, and creating opportunities for peer-to-peer interaction. Industry relevance and preparation for employment were also key themes, highlighting students’ desire for practical, future-focused learning.
What’s Next
The DVC(ES) and Strategy Portfolio teams are committed to ongoing engagement with coordinators and educators across the University. If you have ideas, questions, or feedback, reach out to [email protected].
