Explorance Appointed by University of St Andrews to Support “Streamlined” Approach to Module Feedback Questionnaires and Pulse Surveys

Montreal, Quebec – September 2025 – The University of St Andrews – Scotland’s first university, having been founded in 1413, and the third oldest in the English-speaking world – has selected Explorance to transform its approach to student module evaluation surveys.

St Andrews had been using an older system, originally designed for a paper-based approach to Module Evaluation Questionnaires (MEQs), but after an external review, sought a change.

Vice-Principal Education (Proctor) Professor Clare Peddie, whose responsibilities include oversight of the University’s Teaching and Learning strategy, explained: “Following a recommendation of the Quality Enhancement and Standards Review (QESR) and a prolonged period of low response rates from students, we conducted a review of our MEQs, which resulted in developing a new approach and the procurement of a new system in Explorance Blue.

“The key features of this new approach include: the ability to facilitate more meaningful and focussed responses from students, the introduction of an additional mid-semester pulse survey allowing staff to act on student feedback during the module, more streamlined question sets to promote engagement, and a mechanism to ensure timely closure of the feedback loop so that our students feel heard and can see the value in providing feedback to inform module enhancements.

“By procuring a better digital platform to gather feedback, and a shift in our overall approach to surveys, this partnership with Explorance will further support our students to achieve positive outcomes in education and student experience.”

The University’s Business Transformation delivery team is currently implementing Blue, the evaluation software, with a view to delivering the new approach to module feedback in semester one of the 2025-26 academic year. This work will include the installation, integration, configuration and testing of the new system alongside associated work to update related processes, guidance documents, and webpages, and the provision of training and support.

Kamila Brady, Project Manager at the University of St Andrews said: “Our previous survey management system was no longer meeting the University’s needs, the paper-based process became obsolete and workarounds to bring this online were cumbersome, and after

establishing our high-level requirements Explorance was deemed the best fit for our business case. It will particularly enhance our approach to student engagement, including increasing response rates and closing the feedback loop, so that students can see their voice matters and how their views directly feed into improvements in our teaching.

The instant evaluation will also save time in terms of the manual processing of that information, supporting productivity and time efficiency, and the reporting will be much slicker. The system is expected to be easy to set up and maintain, and from the demonstration, it is intuitive and user friendly for staff and students.”

Dee McDougall-Bagnall, Education Project Officer at St Andrews, commented: “A key strand of the University’s Strategic Plan 2022-27 is to ensure that students are integral partners throughout the educational and student experience as we extend our community digitally. We pride ourselves on consistently having the very best student satisfaction levels in the National Student Survey, and so driving engagement further through Blue will feed into that. Blue will enable both the end-of-module survey and additional mid-semester pulse survey, the first being in February 2026, and can link outputs between the two, helping to demonstrate the impact of changes made in response to student feedback during a module.”

Kamila added: “Explorance have been very accommodating throughout the process. They are extremely flexible and seek to make the implementation of Blue as simple and pain free as possible. The team are open and honest as to what will be required from us as a project team, which is really refreshing, they guide us well and are there to answer any questions. They are quick to come back on anything and are highly knowledgeable on all aspects. It has been a really pleasant experience and reassuring too. We are also excited about the potential of Explorance MLY, and hope to use that for AI-powered qualitative feedback analysis at a later stage.”

John Atherton, VP Sales EMEA at Explorance, said: “We are delighted to have been appointed by the University of St Andrews. Its strengths in student experience and outcomes have remained the cornerstones of its success, and now with an institutional strategy underpinned by a commitment to digital technology, we look forward to working with St Andrews to enhance its approach to student surveys, closing the feedback loop, and informing students on how survey data is being actioned.”