Why the student journey is more important than ever

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Recently, we held a talk at the YMS21 LDN conference, to discuss the student journey, how it’s evolving, and why now it is more important than ever to focus on improving it.

The current climate is continually evolving and rapidly changing and impacting student expectations. With policy changes becoming more frequent, and ongoing uncertainty, there has never been a more important time to review the student journey. But what does that mean? And how do you engage, adapt, and evolve your student journey strategy?

Let’s start with the student journey, what it means, and why it’s so important. It revolves around 6 guiding principles:

  • End-to-end: The student journey runs right from initial point of awareness to beyond graduation.
  • Multiple touchpoints: There are multiple touchpoints that are encountered from visiting the website to, attending an open day, applying and receiving coursework feedback.
  • Individual: The student journey is a very individual experience – it’s different for different people and needs to be considered this way.
  • Systems, process, and people: There are multiple systems, processes and people involved and this will be different for every university.
  • Complexity: It’s complex and difficult to understand, but it’s vital we do have an understanding to satisfy customer needs and requirements.
  • Experience: Ultimately, it’s all about the experience. What are individual expectations and what is the reality of the experience? Which touchpoints are more important in decision making?

When we consider the huge changes brought on by the global pandemic, how we do things, what we value and what motivates has all evolved. Remote study and work, health and well-being and support requirements are front and centre of what is important and the student journey needs to adapt and reflect these needs.

We need to be aware that we’re going to continue to see a lot of changes. There’ll be more asynchronous content, as well as multidisciplinary products, digital first infrastructures and agility and ability to pivot rapidly. It is likely we will be living with uncertainty for a while longer and will have to continue to adapt.

The student journey and expectation may have changed, but so can how we approach and improve that experience. If you’d like to find out more about the student journey, or to watch the recording, click here.