NUS and students’ unions are working together to demonstrate the national impact of Student Opportunities (sports, societies, volunteering, fundraising and media).
There’s a detailed guidance document here: Impact Plan 2018-2022
Why is impact important?
- So we can prove what that we’re making an impact/how much we’re making an impact
- To measure our effectiveness and efficiency, so we can use resources well
- To help students to understand what we do, so they get more involved.
- To protect ourselves from political attacks
- To improve staff morale and retention
We’ve been working on this for the last few years. There’s a host of toolkits and guidance available below that you can use.
2017-18
- Changes in individuals (skills, knowledge, experience and beliefs)
- Benefits to charities (through calculating the funds raised nationally)
- Student Opportunities and retention (whether a student remains on their course) and attainment (their academic achievement) – this is based upon Teesside SU’s TUSU Premium work
This Student Opportunities Impact Reporting Template will help us to build a national picture. Please email this to studentopportunities@nus.org.uk when complete.
2018-2019
NUS Prove Me Wrong project is the basis of our 2018-2019 work. Prove Me Wrong is all based on disproving a negative statement, which is a better way of doing research. At SU18 Conference you chose three of the Prove Me Wrong statements that would be easy, interesting and useful for you to prove.
These are:
- Students participating in clubs and societies are less likely to complete their course of study.
- Taking part in clubs and societies doesn’t make a difference to the employment prospects of students from disadvantaged backgrounds
- Taking part in regular physical activity through the SU doesn’t have an effect on students’ personal psychological wellbeing
You can chose 1, 2 or 3 of these statements and work out how you can prove it wrong in your SU. The data from each SU will then be compiled and we will be able to show what each area looks like nationally. The idea is that SUs will come up with great ways to do this work and share it with each other. That’s why we’ve set-up the Facebook Workplace impact space. Search for it from the Student Opportunities Workplace.
Other bits of data
NUS have centrally started to bring data together on the big statistics we have. Whilst this doesn’t show impact, it tells the start of an interesting story… MyGuide Student Opportunities data. (You will need to be logged-in to NUS Connect to access this).