Making student experience a core part of academic work

Student experience has become one of higher education’s biggest focuses. It fills brochures and websites, university frameworks and strategies, and entire portfolios are now built around it. Rankings measure it, regulators report on it, and yet for many academic staff it feels like something on the edges.

That separation is the problem. We know from research and from everyday teaching that academic staff strongly shape student experience. Still, student experience is often reduced to what happens outside the classroom: social events, peer-mentoring schemes, administrative support or well-being programmes. These things matter for our students, but for most, the real experience sits at curriculum level, in their relationships with those closest to their learning, in how clearly they can see progress, and in how supported and connected they feel along the way.

If universities want to excel at student experience, they need to place academic work at its centre. This is fundamentally a leadership responsibility: senior executives, heads of school and programme directors must structure academic roles so student experience is part of core business rather than an “extra” that sits alongside teaching and research. Academic staff, in turn, need clarity, time and support to enact this work meaningfully.

• A warm welcome is a strategic imperative for higher education
• Intervene with empathy to support students in need
• The evolution of student onboarding

Impactful student experience depends on structural support

For academic staff, caring about student experience often means taking on additional work that is neither captured nor recognised. To make this sustainable, universities must create conditions where the work is not only resourced and visible but also, in explicit ways, career-shaping, so academic staff want to, and can, lean in.

Belonging and engagement depend on regular, authentic contact between students and academic staff. Creating space for connection is something programme directors and academic staff can influence directly, but only when schools and faculties allocate workload and resources to enable it. When timetables, staffing models and course designs intentionally include time for dialogue, students experience consistent opportunities to build relationships with academic staff and peers. This helps students see that their voices matter, and gives academic staff a clearer picture of who their students are and what’s working. When those conversations become part of practice and are built into teaching cycles, improvement can happen in real time, not when the semester is over.

Educational design that reinforces student experience

Student experience work also needs educational design support. For example, pairing academic staff with learning designers to redesign a large first-year course so students receive scaffolded feedback in increments across a semester can dramatically increase confidence and early engagement. Well-designed assessment and curriculum structures make expectations visible and help students form learning communities around shared tasks.

Student support remains core to ensuring equity. Students often turn to academic staff first when they need help navigating programme requirements or exceptional circumstances that disrupt their ability to study. Academic staff therefore need training and simple referral pathways that align with individual student needs.

Better data helps, but only if it’s usable. End-of-semester teaching surveys rarely tell academic staff what they need to know to improve student experience in real time. Quick pulse checks, engagement dashboards, small-group feedback or other real-time data can give meaningful insight into how students are connecting and progressing over time to support change. Pairing these insights with coaching and structured support systems helps academic staff interpret and act on what they learn. 

Institutions also need to create opportunities for data-informed dialogue. Data and dashboards can bring academic staff and students together to ask: what do we know about our students? What’s in our control? What will we try next semester? When goals are set, they should be tracked and supported, so that academic staff see their impact, and can learn from peers and collaborate on meaningful improvements.

Innovation takes funding, even when it starts small

Innovation funding matters because many of the most meaningful improvements to student experience begin as small, local trials, such as rethinking first-year orientation, redesigning feedback processes or piloting new ways of creating connection in large classes. Seed funding allows academic staff to test ideas that build belonging and clearer pathways through learning. When those innovations show measurable benefits for students, institutions should support their broader adoption so all students, not just those in one course, experience the gains.

Ultimately, university governance determines whether student experience is treated as core academic work. Leaders signal its importance through workload models, promotion criteria and the kinds of conversations that are normalised in schools. When academic contributions to student experience, such as improving first-year success, fostering belonging or strengthening professional identity, are recognised and rewarded, academic staff are more able and motivated to prioritise them. Institutions that embed these priorities into their systems and incentives send a clear message: this work matters and it progresses careers.

If we want academic staff to care about student experience, senior leaders must create the conditions for this work to make sense, where it is valued and resourced. That means embedding student experience into academic roles, providing usable evidence and support, and structuring goals so improvements are possible. Student experience lives in curriculum, in how institutions hire and promote, and in the everyday conditions academic staff work within.

Roma Forbes is an associate professor and deputy associate dean (academic) for student experience and success in the Faculty of Health, Medicine and Behavioural Sciences, and Benjamin Ong is a final-year physiotherapy student and a member of the student council in the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, both at the University of Queensland.

If you would like advice and insight from academics and university staff delivered direct to your inbox each week, sign up for the Campus newsletter.