Wits University Opts for Explorance MLY to Deliver Deeper Understanding of Qualitative Student Sentiments

The University of the Witwatersrand (Wits University), a multi-campus public research university situated in the northern areas of central Johannesburg, has selected Explorance MLY to provide AI-powered qualitative analysis of students’ open-ended feedback in surveys.

Wits, which has used Explorance Blue for end-to-end automation of their course evaluations since 2020, has turned to MLY to help uncover insights hidden in free-text comments and, in turn, enrich its institutional reporting capabilities.

Nompumelelo Mazibuko, Evaluations Coordinator in the University’s Quality and Academic Planning Office, outlined the strategic need for MLY.

“We get a lot of qualitative feedback from multiple projects we oversee, besides mainstream teaching and course evaluations which run on a quarterly basis, which include a Gateway to Success survey for new first-year students and supervisor evaluations for postgraduate students, as well as from wider institutional research,” she explained. “In the case of student evaluations on their learning experiences, we could only previously deliver quantitative analysis through Blue, and we would then give academics the raw data and comments as they were without necessarily doing any analysis on it ourselves. For some, that meant receiving quite long reports, especially for larger classes.”

The Quality and Academic Planning Office team is required to produce quarterly reports for individual lecturers, heads of schools, and committees (Teaching and Learning, and Student Success). “That means it is key for us to have detailed reports generated and aggregated for different audiences,” Nompumelelo continued. “MLY will support us on many different levels –it is not a one-size-fits-all. We are not only looking at it from our projects per se, but some of the quality assurance research we are running where we engage with students and analyse trends with a view to improving on our processes. We expect MLY, which is incorporated to Blue, will be up and running towards the end of the year.”

Nompumelelo added that MLY would also be utilised in programme reviews, which are currently in development. “In all cases, we are confident that the feedback from the reports we are generating will spark some intriguing conversations at both school and institutional level,” she said. “The reason we went with MLY is because we can integrate with Blue and improve on the quality of the reports and analysis on the lecturer, heads of schools and Dean’s reports, and then we can escalate to other levels as well.”

John Atherton, VP Sales EMEA at Explorance, commented: “Wits University has been a valued Explorance customer for the past five years, and during that time we have worked with them to move the institution forward on their student evaluation journey. Now, with MLY, we have the opportunity to help Wits achieve its objectives around turning open-ended feedback into insights, and using this to drive improvements.”

With five faculties, and 34 schools, Witts is home to approximately 3,700 full-time academics and over 40,000 students. MLY survey evaluations, focusing on 10 qualitative comment questions, and reporting processes begin in 2026.