What do sport and exercise sciences students say about teaching staff?
Students in teaching staff comments within the National Student Survey (NSS, the UK’s annual survey of final‑year undergraduates) are highly positive overall, with 78.3% positive and a sentiment index of +52.8. In sport and exercise sciences across the sector, students particularly value engaging delivery and visible support: sentiment about Teaching Staff sits at +42.4 and the availability of teaching staff at +39.5, while assessment clarity remains the main drag, with marking criteria at −38.4. These frames matter because the NSS theme tracks how students describe staff behaviours across providers, and the subject area situates patterns within a shared discipline vocabulary. Against that backdrop, we examine how those strengths and gaps show up in early‑stage student narratives and what programmes do next.
How do students experience lecturer support and availability?
Students emphasise access to staff who respond, advise and spend time in practical settings. Given the laboratory and field components of programmes, predictable availability and rapid acknowledgement often determine whether a cohort keeps momentum between sessions. Teaching teams that publish office hours, provide clear routes to help and keep responses consistent across modules sustain positive experiences and reduce unnecessary escalation. This aligns with sport and exercise sciences’ strong tone on staff accessibility, and it is reinforced when personal tutors and module leads coordinate signposting so students do not repeat requests.
How do teaching quality and lecture engagement shape learning?
Students respond best when staff connect theory with practice and structure sessions around worked demonstrations and applied discussion. In this discipline, conceptual explanations tied to movement, physiology and measurement help students translate content into technique. Staff who vary pace, move between lab and classroom examples, and use short practice loops keep attention and aid recall. Regularly sampling student understanding during sessions enables timely reteaching before misconceptions harden.
Does feedback arrive in time and drive improvement?
Students seek feedback that is prompt, specific and actionable. Where assessment guidance is ambiguous, especially around standards and thresholds, confidence dips and resubmissions rise. Programmes that publish annotated exemplars, task‑specific rubrics and concise “next steps” show movement in students’ performance between early and later assessments. Mapping common pitfalls to teaching activities in the next week makes feedback more than a post‑hoc commentary.
How do interactions with lecturers outside class influence outcomes?
Informal mentoring and conversations during labs, clinics and placements build trust and accelerate skills acquisition. Students gauge whether it is safe to ask for help from how staff handle questions in the moment. Lecturers who invite quick check‑ins after practicals, and who close the loop on queries at the start of the next session, help cohorts stay aligned without creating dependency.
Do one-to-one meetings feel accessible and useful?
One‑to‑one tutorials allow targeted guidance on technique, data handling and academic writing. Students benefit when booking is simple, the focus is tied to assessment briefs, and sessions end with two or three agreed actions. Training staff in brief coaching approaches and empathetic listening increases the value of these meetings for confidence as well as competence.
How effective is staff communication during theory and practice?
Clarity of instruction is a safety issue in practical work and a comprehension issue in lectures. Students value staff who stage directions, check for understanding before progression and translate technical terminology into plain language without losing precision. Where multiple demonstrators or GTAs are involved, agreeing a shared script and signal points reduces mixed messages.
Which teaching styles sustain student engagement?
Blending interactive lectures, small‑group tasks and hands‑on labs supports different learning preferences and keeps attention high. Short cycles of demonstration–practice–review, coupled with visible learning outcomes, help students see progress. Programmes that treat student feedback as a design input for teaching activities can adapt formats quickly without sacrificing coherence.
How do teaching teams support student well-being and mental health?
Students notice when staff normalise conversations about workload, recovery and sport‑related stress, and when adjustments are handled consistently. Simple practices—signposting routes to help during taught time, checking in after intense practical blocks, and aligning deadlines across modules—reduce pressure without diluting standards.
What should programmes prioritise next?
Focus on the basics that students say make the biggest difference: keep support visible and predictable, embed assessment clarity into teaching, and use rapid feedback to close learning gaps. Monitor differential experiences across cohorts and modules, and check that actionability of feedback is consistent across the teaching team. Doing this strengthens NSS performance and, more importantly, the everyday student experience in labs, clinics and seminars.
How Student Voice Analytics helps you
Student Voice Analytics makes these priorities visible and trackable. It:
- surfaces sport and exercise sciences comments by topic and sentiment over time, with drill‑downs to programme and cohort
- provides like‑for‑like comparisons for Teaching Staff themes and related topics across segments such as mode and year of study
- supplies concise, anonymised summaries and export‑ready outputs for programme meetings, quality boards and TEF evidence
- closes the loop by showing where changes shift sentiment, so teams can prioritise actions that move student experience most
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