Seeing UCD through the eyes of our students – to improve our students’ experience

By Olga Murdoch, UCD Agile

There is no doubt that staff and faculty in UCD have great empathy and understanding for our students, but have you ever wondered how closely the student perspective on UCD aligns with what we think?  How do they see UCD? Equipped with our empathy for the students, what can we do to improve their UCD experience?

The Student Experience Mapping project, delivered in the first half of 2019, revealed how UCD students see and navigate the complex UCD landscape. This insight into the student perspective was used as the basis for defining four key areas to focus, three of which have been developed as projects to improve the student experience.

Two projects – to support students’ ‘trusted person’ and improve the ‘findability’ of information – are underway, whilst a third project, enabling students to ‘shape their living and learning’ environment, is due to kick off in January 2020. Each project is being delivered using the rapid improvement event approach, with participants coming together from across the University to quickly create, agree and implement solutions.

So far, over 200 students, staff,  and faculty have participated in the Student Experience Mapping and subsequent projects. For more on these projects and what we learned from the Student Experience Mapping project, visit the UCD Agile website.