HOW UNIVERSITY STUDENTS ARE ENGAGED IN «FEEDBACK»: SYSTEM RESEARCH PRACTICE IN URFU

Abstract

The article belongs to case category and is aimed at defining value of the university research about students for making high-level management decisions in attracting different groups of students and improving the educational programs quality. The case of the Ural Federal University describes how the distributed (network) marketing information system for the implementation of university research provides prompt monitoring of students opinions as the internal target group and the analytical support in the university management according to the needs of stakeholders. The important mechanism of students’ influence on the higher education changes is identifying the student expectations and experience by receiving the feedback in student surveys form. It also promotes student involvement into the educational process. The article describes the experience of including students into the university stockholders feedback mechanisms: top-management, creators and organizers of the educational programs, university teachers. The authors look into target group needs in terms of feedback mechanisms as well as the forms of their implementation based on the university development program. When the university marketing strategy in the field of education is implemented student research is conducted at the different stages of the interaction with university internal target groups (before entering the university, during getting higher education and after graduation from the university). The Ural Federal University experience in measuring the educational environment quality shows student strategies and trajectories (educational, scientific and professional). Such a system of implementing intra-university research allows for providing top-management with the actual information about prospective students, students, graduates for and is linked to three important management educational processes: (1) enrollment campaign management; (2) educational process and services support management, evaluating new educational practices effectiveness and opportunities for student individual trajectories implementation; (3) development of partner relations with graduates, assessment of their success at the labor market. The analysis of students from universities participating in ТОР 5-100 showed that at many universities students feedback mechanisms aren't formed sufficiently, research is irregular at most universities. The value of the article is that approach to the student research at UrFU can be related to the comprehensive assessment of the educational environment. The main principles of the approach are as follows: (1) research differentiation within each stage of interaction between students and university target groups (starting at the moment when prospective students have not chosen the university yet some 9 months before the final admission, during the open days and reception of documents from prospective students, after studying the reasons of the prospective students outflow, secondly, the annual studies about educational students trajectories, training satisfaction conducted; thirdly, graduate survey are over a half a year, 5-years and 10-year period after their graduation); (2) for improving the research methodology and methods involving internal and external experts in the field of higher education sociology, economics as well as master degree students and post-graduate student students; (3) creation of online data publishing mechanisms for the general public. Applying the results of university studies in practice is still a challenging aspect despite the growing need of leading Russian universities stockholders to increase the student activity in the educational process via involving students into the feedback mechanisms. Further research can be directed, firstly, at comparative monitoring studies at Russian and foreign universities, secondly, at regular university researches aimed at solving the university management specific tasks in the field of educational programs in higher and additional education on the basis of the opinions and assessments of the student needs, including rating the quality of educational programs after each module.