Students
Educational Gain
Learn more about what educational gain is, and how it relates to your student experience.
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As students, university life can be hectic!
You balance classes and assignments with independent study, work, clubs and societies, and family life. Sometimes you sacrifice hours of sleep, and even socialising, to achieve your best in every dimension.
Yet, how often do you ask yourself:
- What do I actually want to gain from university?
- How do I define my success in higher education?
These are questions that definitions and measures of 'Educational Gain' try to answer.
What is Educational Gain?
Educational Gain (EG) is used in UK higher education (HE) to determine what, and how, students gain from their experience of being at university. Some things you should know about EG are:
- It's based on the idea that you should be at the centre of your HE experience
- It's designed to prompt your reflection on your HE journey
- It helps to involve you in developing and shaping your own university experience
The end result? By evaluating EG using a wide range of data, including your feedback, we contribute to the evaluation of our programmes' success, while working to identify examples of good practice and areas for improvement.
How do we define Educational Gain at York St John?
Educational Gain at York St John is the collaboratively achieved change in your confidence, knowledge, skills and values that occurs during your programme of study.
These are changes which help to promote understanding of - and make a positive difference to - the communities in which you live, learn and work, in the pursuit of social justice.
Measuring Educational Gain
Educators, regulators and universities have all trialled different methods of measuring EG. It is a challenge, however, as EG is often very individualised and abstract. This is why we are developing an approach that encompasses multiple aspects of EG.
Here are some of the ways that we plan to measure it:
Knowledge and skills
Your module marks will tell us what and how much you have learned about your subject and the transferrable skills you've developed.
Confidence and values
Your answers on the YSJ Experience Survey (YES) and National Student Survey (NSS) will tell us how much you have improved your confidence and understanding.
Impact on community
We will ask our placement providers to tell us about the positive difference you have made to them. You can reflect on this in your Employability Profile.
