Since CoLRiC’s inception in 1993 it has published member survey reports on a range of issues that impact on the Further Education and Sixth Form College sector. An executive summary of the 2020 survey is available in the document repository. It reflected on the impact of the Covid pandemic and subsequent first lockdown.
About the 2020 CoLRiC Survey
The first lockdown was announced after the 2020 Survey had been launched. This meant that responses included both pre-and post-lockdown data which distorted the results. Obviously, student views, requirements and feedback during the lockdown were dramatically different from feedback collected before. Regardless, some interesting broad-based themes arose from the survey. There were lots of good news stories we extracted from the survey data; a wealth of compliments students made about their library and learning resource services. They very much value learning resources and services and the support of library staff. There was also universal praise for outreach activities, collaboration with curriculum teams and college leadership, alongside our significant contribution to e-learning.
Future CoLRiC Surveys
To ensure the relevance and quality of future surveys and support you in identifying trends and developments that will help inform operational and strategic planning, the CoLRiC Executive Committee is reviewing the structure of surveys for this year and beyond.
Based on feedback from member institutions, most notably difficulties in acquiring data on student experiences and activities post-2020, CoLRiC has decided that this review is essential. We appreciate that previous survey findings have been helpful for benchmarking purposes, but students are changing the way that they engage with and make use of our services, so it is crucial to explore new ways of gathering more qualitative information to demonstrate the value and impact of library and learning resource services.
A key suggestion is regular quick surveys on current hot topics impacting on the sector. These could embrace specific themes reflected in CoLRiC’s quality and accreditation framework (PAS), and would include leadership and management, learning resources and collection development, quality assurance and teaching and learning. We can use the information from these surveys to identify areas for member support, including hosting further online seminars and publishing findings in our e-newsletter CoLRiC Impact.
Please do get in touch with the Admin team – colric@colric.org.uk – if you have other ideas and approaches that would be useful to you.
An overview of CoLRiC surveys:
- Annual Performance and Impact Indicators survey (PII)
- Sixth Form College survey
- General FE College survey