At the time of the engagement, the EFI was in the process of developing its undergraduate programmes. Leadership had a rough sense of what they wanted the programmes to look like and had formulated a series of principles to underpin the programmes. However, at this stage their conversations were focussed on what these principles meant for the programmes in an operational sense — e.g., credit allocations, types of module, and methods of delivery. 

They wanted to build out their vision in collaboration with students, drawing from students’ education experiences, gaining a more rounded idea of what these programmes should look and feel like from a student perspective.

The Edinburgh Futures Institute (EFI) is part of the University of Edinburgh and is developing progressive and non-traditional approaches to higher education. This includes giving students more autonomy over their learning, more choice over whether to study online or on-campus, promoting interdisciplinarity, and working collaboratively with a large range of partners. 

Edinburgh Futures Institute

Working with the EFI we recruited students from across the University to engage them across two focussed workshops. These workshops used creative visual and scenario-building techniques to understand:

• What these students’ experiences of undergraduate education at the University had been so far. Identifying key gaps in provision, as well moments of value.
  
• How the students interpreted the ambition of these programmes with a focus on how the programmes’ guiding principles should translate into a student experience.
  
  

We synthesised the information collected from the students into two key outputs:
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• A Vision
  The vision spoke to each principle outlining how each should translate into the student experience. It was captured in a visual illustration which was converted into content for posters, slide decks, and social media.
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• An Insight and Recommendations Report
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  The report outlined the main learnings from the workshops. It spoke to students’ interpretation of the principles, the issues they associated with each principle, and ideas for how these principles could translate into learning content, structure, delivery and other aspects of the student experience as well as other strategic recommendations.