From Manual to Strategic: University of West London's Feedback Transformation

About University of West London

The University of West London prides itself on delivering career-focused courses with excellent teaching in a campus designed for a great student experience. Based in the heart of one of the UK’s most successful business regions, the University has a range of highly qualified staff, with a wealth of experience in their respective disciplines, and strong connections with key industries. It was ranked the second-highest London University for overall student satisfaction in the National Student Survey 2026 (The NSS 2026 result is based on the average of responses to all survey questions across the taught student population).

The Challenge: Modernising Student Feedback to Support Student Success

The University of West London (UWL) sought to transform its approach to student experience surveys by introducing a more effective and centralised survey ecosystem. This included replacing its existing Module Evaluation Survey (MES) through the adoption of Explorance, chosen for its comprehensive functionalities that better align with the institution’s strategic priorities for decision-making and acting upon student feedback.

The initiative supported the University’s strategic objective of ‘Promoting student success and lifelong learning’, outlined in its ambitious Impact 2028 strategy. Improving survey insights – and enhancing the quality, accessibility and usefulness of student feedback data – was identified as a key enabler in achieving these goals.

Sara Raybould, Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Education and Student Experience) at UWL, explained: “In recent years we have gained national recognition for the quality of our student experience, but we’re always looking to innovate. With our ‘Promoting student success’ goal, we wanted a better way to survey our students.”

The Solution: Deepening Module Evaluation Survey Insights Through Blue and MLY

In 2025, UWL selected Explorance Blue and Explorance MLY to support its student feedback strategy. Sara described the decision-making process:

“We saw Blue and MLY as a good opportunity, had a demo twice, and moved to purchase them. The priority for us is to ensure students feel empowered and part of a community. Constant voice is needed, because it is only through feedback that you ever improve. The partnership with Explorance will give us more evidence-based data to work with.”

For Eirini Tatsi, lead for Blue and MLY, the platform’s usability, functionality and reporting capabilities were immediate differentiators.

“I really liked how interactive the platform was and the level of user engagement it supports,” she recalled. “I was also impressed by the range of functionality available. Academics can access feedback reports in one place, which also supports GDPR requirements around the sharing of feedback. From my perspective, one of the biggest advantages is the time saved in analysing data and producing feedback reports. For instance, MLY reduces the manual effort required and helps minimise human error when analysing large volumes of narrative feedback. Those were the main factors that stood out.”

Following implementation, pilot module evaluation surveys were launched in April 2025. By the first semester of the 2025-26 academic year, over 900 modules were being surveyed through Blue.

“The MES is particularly important because it captures feedback at module level – and the feedback we’ve received from both students and academics who have used the Blue has been extremely positive,” Erini said. “They really like having everything in one place through their own Blue profile, with all their surveys included. From a reporting perspective, which is something I particularly value, Blue supports more strategic decision-making. Previously, we had to update our MES dashboard, review all the data, and write the reports. Now, the reporting process is much more efficient. Academics have also appreciated being able to access reports relevant to their level, whether that’s university-wide, faculty-level or module-level reporting.”

At the same time, UWL began using MLY to analyse qualitative feedback from MES data and other student experience surveys, initially applying it to first-semester responses from the 2024-25 academic year before expanding its use throughout 2025-26.

Eirini highlighted the benefits of automating qualitative analysis: “MLY is definitely one of my favourite aspects because previously I conducted qualitative analysis manually. Overall, it’s a very useful tool for reporting purposes. The outputs are used by relevant departments, boards and committees to discuss areas for improvement and support strategic decision-making. Academic and professional service departments are very satisfied with the MLY dashboard, which they use them alongside feedback reports and our MES dashboard to inform their practice.”

The Outcome: Driving Efficiency and Evidence-Based Decision-Making

After 12 months, UWL has already realised significant efficiencies and strengthened its ability to use student feedback to inform institutional decision-making.

Reflecting on progress so far, Eirini said: “Overall, I am satisfied with the progress achieved after the first 12 months. The Explorance team has been responsive and supportive throughout the implementation. Regarding MLY, while there is always room for further enhancement, I am pleased with its performance and the significant contribution it has made so far. The tool has undoubtedly saved me several weeks of work. Previously, analysing qualitative comments required extensive manual effort, including data preparation, comment classification and thematic analysis – a process that could easily take a week or more depending on the volume of responses.

“My main priority for 2026-27 is to continue promoting the adoption of both Blue and MLY across the institution, ensuring we fully leverage their capabilities. The rich outcomes and insights generated through these surveys are regularly presented and discussed at key UWL committees, supporting informed decision-making and ensuring that student feedback is effectively acted upon.”

Beyond operational efficiencies, Blue and MLY are helping support broader institutional priorities around access, participation, equity, inclusion and evidence-based transformation. Erini elaborated:

“Another responsibility I lead is our Access and Participation Plan (APP). While I don’t use Blue specifically to collect APP-related feedback, I do use feedback gathered through the MES to inform APP research and evaluation activities. For example, feedback relating to belonging or community can contribute to APP work, and vice versa. Within our student experience survey policy, one of our goals is that survey outcomes should be used strategically to address equality of opportunity gaps across the student lifecycle. There is a clear connection between the two areas. One supports the other.”

Dr Kostas Tzortzis, Pro Vice-Chancellor (Strategy, Performance and Analytics) and Director of Strategic Planning and Data Services at UWL, also reflected on the value of the partnership:

“Explorance has supported our move to centralised surveys by giving us a consistent view of activity and how we listen and act on feedback. Through MLY we undertake more qualitative data collection and make better use of the intel we gather. This brings enhanced effectiveness in most critical area of performance.

“Long-term we want to better engage academics with multiple information from Blue and MLY, and through advanced reporting achieve internal development. Blue reduces the manual work and repetition of work and enables us to have more focus on how we structure data and get the insights we need more quickly. With open-ended comment analysis in MLY we have the ability to separate positive and negative sentiments. Knowing that MLY is sector trained with other universities brings confidence and sets it apart from a general AI platform.”