From student satisfaction to student capability: rethinking the student experience through applied learning

This blog was kindly authored by Dr Joel Montgomery, Lecturer in Management and Student Experience Lead at University of Kent, Kent Business School.

There is a familiar way of talking about student experience in higher education. We ask whether students are satisfied, feel supported and have received the services they expected. These questions matter, but they can narrow our view of students into consumers of an educational offer designed elsewhere.

If higher education is serious about student success, skills and employability, we need to understand students differently. They are not passive recipients of knowledge, but active participants who bring their own experiences, ambitions and uncertainties into the classroom. The task is not simply to give them knowledge, but to help them use it, apply it and recognise what they are becoming capable of doing.

This is where student experience, student voice and employability need to come together. Too often, student voice is treated as feedback, employability as careers support and student experience as the wider environment around learning. For students, these things are connected. Their experience is shaped by whether learning feels meaningful, whether they can see its value and whether they are supported to connect their studies to life beyond the classroom.

The next step in the student experience debate should be about curriculum. Better services, feedback mechanisms and careers provision all matter, but cannot be the whole answer. This is also an equity issue. Students’ time is constrained by paid work, commuting, caring responsibilities and uneven confidence. If valuable learning about skills and employability sits outside the curriculum, access will always be uneven. A more inclusive approach is to make skills recognition, practice and articulation part of everyday teaching and assessment.

The question is not only how we support students around their studies, but how we design learning so they become active, capable and confident within them. That means designing curriculum, assessment and participation together. One example from my own context at Kent Business School is how applied learning can bring these agendas together.

In a teaching project I have been developing with a colleague, students use their knowledge in relation to practical, authentic issues rather than simply reproducing concepts in assessment. They have to make judgements, communicate ideas, work through uncertainty and consider how academic knowledge can be used beyond the seminar room.

The Kent Business School Challenge module shows what this can look like when learning is built around live organisational problems. Students work in consultancy teams on real projects with external partners, developing recommendations for organisations that can use them. The wider value is not only that students experience business problems, but that they act as contributors: researching, analysing, interpreting data, managing ambiguity and presenting ideas beyond the university.

Applied learning matters because it makes skills visible. When students analyse a live challenge, build a dashboard, design a digital solution, present recommendations or respond to stakeholder feedback, they develop capabilities that matter for employment and civic life. But unless we help them recognise and articulate those capabilities, much of that development remains hidden.

This is the thinking behind the skills recognition, articulation and practice work I have been developing. Students often have more skills than they realise. They may be able to analyse information, collaborate, adapt, communicate and solve problems, but lack the confidence or language to explain those skills to others. That gap matters when applying for jobs, placements or further study.

Skills development, therefore, needs to be more than a list of attributes in a module handbook. Students need structured opportunities to identify the skills they are using, connect them to learning activities and explain them in ways that make sense outside the university. This is particularly important for students who may not arrive with the same confidence, networks or familiarity with professional language as some of their peers.

There are three wider lessons here:

• Applied learning should be designed into assessment, not treated as an optional enhancement.
• Skills articulation should be embedded in teaching, not left until students meet the careers service.
• Student voice should be used not only to collect feedback, but to help shape learning environments in which students can contribute, practise and develop.

The policy debate on student experience often risks becoming too focused on satisfaction, metrics or short-term outcomes. A richer debate would ask not only how students feel about higher education, but what higher education enables them to do. Students should not just be taught, but developed; not just consulted, but included; not just prepared for employment, but helped to understand and communicate their value.

If we want graduates who can think critically, act confidently and contribute meaningfully, we need to stop treating student experience as something that sits around learning. It should help students step into learning as authors of their own knowledge, skills and future possibilities.