Getting serious about measuring experience by going beyond the easy metrics

Robert Perry (he/him), Head of Research and Insight at Pickle Jar Communications

From the first time they think about attending university, through to their time on campus, and beyond to their lives as members of our alumni community, we want our students to have a positive experience. But measuring that experience is a perennial problem. 

Sometimes the issue with analytics is that we end up measuring the things that are easy to measure, rather than what would actually help us. Different teams and departments have separate access and insight into things such as content performance, web analytics, CRM bookings, engagement rates, enquiry email statistics, application data. And so how do you choose the right things from all that stuff to track what the *actual* student experience looks like? And how do we take that information and use it to create better content?

In this session we'll look at how we can start thinking differently about analysing student experience across our institutions, and the benefits a new approach can have on student recruitment, retention, and overall achievement.

Takeaways:

• A different way to think about what student experience actually is and how it is tracked

• How to be more holistic in how we approach measuring and evaluating student experience 

• How to take insights from different sources of experience data and use them to influence content creation.

Bio

Robert (usually known as “Pez”) is Pickle Jar’s lead on all aspects of information-gathering, audience research, user testing, and anything else related to content insights or customer understanding.

He has worked with schools, colleges, universities, membership organisations, charities, and education sector bodies. Whatever the work and whoever the client, Robert likes to find the connections between the driving forces of a project and the needs of the audience, with the aim of being able to satisfy both at the same time. 

Before joining Pickle Jar, Robert worked on content creation and digital communications in the aviation industry. He studied communications and English literature at Newcastle University, and now lives in Newcastle. His favourite answer to any question is “it depends”.