Student feedback key to getting NAAC tag

Bhanu P Lohumi

Tribune News Service 

Shimla, July 14

The National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) has asked all higher education institutions to get accreditation by 2022 as per the Revised Accreditation Framework (RAF) with student satisfaction as the major factor for accreditation. 

A pre-determined weightage has been given to this key indicator in the accreditation framework and the students' satisfaction survey (SSS) analysis score will be used as a key component of accreditation. 

A stratified random feedback of students will be taken for the survey and if the response rate is below 10 per cent, it will not be considered. The feedback will be spread evenly across different classes, year of enrolment and gender as far as possible and higher education institutions will be required to submit data of all students (Classwise with name, e-mail, mobile number and Aadhaar number).

Institutions and teachers will not try to influence students which will ensure a genuine feedback for the institute to improve further as per the new framework.

A format of 21 questions — 20 objective and one open-ended essay-type — will be given to students  which will be analysed in the scale of 4 to 0 — the most positive response rated as 4 and most negative as 0. The mean score for each question will be calculated and the overall mean will be arrived at. 

The figure in the range of 4 to 0 will be the score of the key indicator of the students' satisfaction survey,   which is part of criterion II on teaching —  learning and evaluation.

Under open-ended question, students are asked to give three observations, suggestions to improve the overall teaching, learning experience in the institution and the analysis will be carried out by aggregating the most occurring suggestions in students' response. This will provide an idea of the most general expectations, observations and suggestions from students.

  A maximum of two survey attempts will be initiated to reach the desired level response which will be received from at least 10 per cent of students' population or 100 in case of colleges and 10 per cent of students or 500, whichever is less in the case of universities. If the response rate is lower than the limits mentioned by NAAC, the metric will not be taken up for evaluation.

The NAAC developed RAF, taking cognizance of changing trends in higher education and aligning the reforms and rapidly transforming global education scenario. RAF has a distinct focus in data capture for qualitative assessment and process details for making  assessment in a more robust, objective, transparent, outcome-oriented and stakeholder-friendly manner.

The impact of assessment and accreditation is quite vast and linked to various schemes of the government, graded autonomy universities, granting autonomous status to colleges, UGC funding and RUSA grants and NAAC has also sent a letter to the Governor in this regard. 

'Get accreditation by 2022'

• NAAC has asked all higher education institutions to get accreditation by 2022
• A stratified random feedback of students will be taken for the survey 
• If the response rate is below 10 per cent, it will not be considered
• The feedback will be spread evenly across different classes, year of enrolment and gender as far as possible
• Higher education institutions will be required to submit data of all students 

Students Satisfaction Survey

• Students' satisfaction survey analysis score would be a key component of accreditation
• Format of 21 questions would be given to the students 
• Format would be rated in the scale of 0 to 4
• Observations and suggestions would be sought from students