Student engagement card-sort exercise

The purpose of this activity is to enable pairs or small groups to discuss their beliefs and views about the role of students in institutional change, to support participants in clarifying their thinking in this area and to understand where there may be differences of opinion. The activity can be used with staff, students, or mixed groups.

Enhancing engagement practices self-reflection task

Using the four-stage picture of engagement as a reflective tool, this exercise challenges students’ representatives and institution managers and academics to evaluate their current student engagement practices. The focus of this task is to think about the outcomes of engagement activities and the impact that policies and practices have on students.

Self-reflection task record matrix

This matrix can be used to record the results of the self-reflection task.

Representation systems benchmarking tool

This tool, developed by NUS in partnership with the Association for Managers in Students’ Unions (AMSU), is designed to support students’ unions and institutions in evaluating their student representative structures. It can be used in isolation or to support the evidence-gathering process in the self-reflection task.