Hi Tracey and all
Not sure this will help if you are just thinking about encouraging students to fill in something you have already devised, but it might still be useful!
We've done a lot of work with researching first year experience and one thing we've done a few times is negotiate with first year tutors to have some time in a class to do a focus group or to do a questionaire/survey. With a survey tool we have taken 15 minutes at the end of first year lectures. With focus groups we have done 'deals' with academic tutors to combine a research methods session with doing a focus group (if that makes sense) - this only works in some disciplines but is still a 'way in'.
One way to get staff to agree to this if they are a bit unsure is to add a faculty/discipline specific question that they are personally interested in. Clearly these strategies only work with students who are attending, but they can be very useful.
When we did the focus group 'class' this was very popular with students - we did it with both first and second years.
We've also done a roving quick questions research/evaluation activity in induction week - catching students in queues and wandering around campus.
Big prizes have never really worked for us. I agree with Kim about vouchers for food outlets and smaller cash incentives for more students seems to work better than one big prize, at least for us and some other people I've spoken with.
Like Kim I would like very much to hear more about what you get from this
Diane
Dr Diane Nutt
Head of the Student Retention Team
Centre for Learning and Quality Enhancement
University of Teesside
Middlesbrough
TS1 3BA
UK
tel. +44 (0) 1642 342541
