2016-17 SLEQ-UG KEY FINDINGS

HKU conducts institutional surveys on students’ learning experiences for undergraduates (SLEQ-UG) on an annual basis for teaching and learning quality assurance and continuous improvement. First, second and final year undergraduate students were invited to participate in the SLEQ-UG.

Highlights of Findings

  • Overall performance on Achievement of Educational Aims, Teaching and Learning Environment, and Overall Satisfaction remained steady over the years. In 2016-17, final year students reported the highest scores on these three aspects (Figure 1).
  • The same cohort of students who completed the SLEQ-UG in their first year and again in their final year was tracked. The 2016-17 data confirmed a consistent trajectory of improvement. Substantial increases were seen on students’ attainment of HKU’s Educational Aims (i.e., Critical Intellectual Inquiry, Tackling Novel Situations and Ill-Defined Problems, Intercultural Understanding, Upholding Personal and Professional Ethics, Global Citizenship), Using English as a Medium of Learning, and Common Core: Cultural (or intercultural) Awareness (Figure 2).
  • More than 70% of the respondents agreed or strongly agreed on questions pertaining to students’ overall learning experiences in relation to Internationalisation, Interdisciplinarity, Innovation and Impact, the University’s 3+1 Is Strategy.
  • Open-ended comments were visualised in comparison word clouds to highlight the keywords most frequently used by students on “Best Aspect(s) of University Experience” and “Suggestion(s) for Improvement” (Figures 3a-3c).
Detailed results at the institutional, Faculty and curriculum levels are available at the online Institutional Survey Reports System (ISRS), which enables Faculties to generate survey reports at various levels and make comparisons across years. All academic staff and administrative staff with access rights can directly access the System after logging on to the HKU Portal account (HKU Portal > Self Service > Teaching and Learning > Institutional Survey Reports > View Reports). Detailed instructions on using the System are available in the User Manual, downloadable here.
Faculties are welcome to contact Dr. Maggie Zhao at myzhao @ hku.hk for support in interpreting and utilizing survey data, and Ms. Yvonne Chan at chanyyw @ hku.hk for technical support support in using ISRS.

Figure 1. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) from the SLEQ-UG between 2012-13 and 2016-17

Figure 2. Longitudinal Tracking of Students’ Perceived Achievement of HKU’s Educational Aims

a

a. SLEQ-UG1

b

b. SLEQ-UG2

c

c. SLEQ-UGF

Figure 3. Open-ended Comments on Suggestions for Improvement (Red) and Best Aspect of University Experience (Blue) in Comparison Word Clouds