New approach to student voice for 2026/27
Starting from the 2026/27 academic year, Sheffield Hallam will move away from the current university-wide Module Evaluation Questionnaire (MEQ) process. Schools and Institutes will instead have autonomy to further design and deliver student voice activities that are aligned with the needs of their courses and students. Student voice remains critical for driving the improvement of teaching, enhancing the student experience, and supporting evidence-informed decision-making.
Why this change?
This decision was informed by recent evaluation work and feedback from students and staff. Evidence shows that most students prefer local, in-class dialogue that is agile and responsive and that they want flexibility in how they provide feedback. This aligns with existing pedagogies at Sheffield Hallam, such as through mid-module reviews.
MEQs were intended to contribute to three aims: enhance our provision based on feedback; provide quality and accountability; and incorporate the student voice in all that we do. Low response rates and limited engagement from students and staff meant that they these aims were not fully achieved. A new Course-Level Evaluation Questionnaire (CLEQ) was tested as a replacement for MEQs in the 2025/26 academic year, but a formal evaluation highlighted that this approach was also not effective for gathering student feedback.
Student voice and School/Institute autonomy
From September 2026, Schools and Institutes will have autonomy to ensure that appropriate student voice activities are in place. This change is intended to enable more timely and purposeful dialogue with students, build on practices that already work well locally, and reduce workload for academic staff. These activities will be used alongside formal Hallam Students’ Union (HSU) student voice approaches.
Local student voice activities should provide regular opportunities for students to share their perspectives and clearly communicate how this feedback has informed decision-making and actions. Course teams are encouraged to focus on using in-class methods throughout the delivery of their modules and courses. Schools and Institutes already employ a range of methods to gather mid-module feedback.
Course and Module Review (CMR) meetings and School/Institute Quality Performance Reviews (S/IQPRs) continue to provide formal mechanisms for quality assurance and quality enhancement, including the discussion of student voice feedback. Key themes and actions will be reviewed and shared through to College Learning, Teaching and Student Success Boards and can be escalated upwards to the university Teaching and Learning Leadership Group (TaLL), Education, Quality and Student Experience Committee (EQSEC), and newly established Student Voice Oversight Group.
MEQs will remain in operation over trimester three of the 2025/26 academic year. All of these MEQs will need to be closed by the end of Friday 30 October 2026 in order to obtain the results from EvaSys, the platform that is used to deliver MEQs.
2025/26 academic year information about Module Evaluation below
Module evaluation is a comprehensive and systematic process to provide module leaders with anonymous feedback from the students studying their modules. It is an important part of the quality assurance and enhancement of the University's academic provision and provides a mechanism for collecting feedback from students on their learning experience and their perceptions of the delivery of teaching. Module evaluation is used to support module review, and reflection on module delivery.
Background
Previous module evaluations have been carried out in various different forms and the way the information has been collected and used has varied. Module evaluation has not always been considered from a course perspective and the findings have not been consistently shared with students.
The University Leadership team approved a corporate approach to module evaluation, which enables students’ module feedback to be aligned with the key indicators of their course experience provided by other measures such as the National Student Survey and Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey. A module evaluation system, 'EvaSys' is used to evaluate the University's modules. EvaSys is a market-leading product used in over 60 UK Universities.
