The College Learner Outcomes Project – 2025-26
We are interested to hear from colleges and college students’ associations interested in joining the College Learner Outcomes Project in the 2025-26 academic year.
This project usually involves the students’ association working in partnership with the college towards improving a specified learner outcome. For example, it could be that the a certain course has low retention or achievement rates, or a certain group of students has low attendance rates. Outcomes like these, and others, may be mentioned in the college Self Evaluation and Action Plan (SEAP).
The idea of this project is to devise ways for students (usually through the students’ association but not always) to contribute to improving these learner outcomes in some way. For example, this might involve collecting student case studies, running a focus group, or using some other method to gather feedback from affected students about the constraints they face that may contribute to the outcomes. Interventions like these can be designed in partnership between the students’ association and the college.
Project Origin and Policy Context
All colleges set improvement targets, not least as part of the annual SEAP. Colleges may be aware of certain courses or groups of students for which there is a need to improve outcomes such as retention, achievement or attendance.
sparqs is keen to explore how students and students’ associations can play their part in shaping colleges’ work towards improving learner outcomes like these, for example by engaging with and hearing from the students involved.
The College Learner Outcomes project began in 2023 with a handful of colleges working together to identify how staff-student partnerships can enhance outcomes for certain groups, demographics, modes or courses, and to develop knowledge and explore potential action.
What might a learner outcomes project look like in practice?
We usually recommend you start with the improvement priorities that the college has already identified. For example, let’s say a certain ethnic group has lower retention rates than others on a particular course or set of courses, and the college had identified that as something to improve. A group of students (e.g. some course reps, or another group of students) could be supported to gather feedback from those students in order to learn more about the circumstances that are causing students to leave those courses. Then, working together and ideally in partnership with staff, the students may be able to suggest improvements that might help to improve attendance, retention or achievement.
By gathering case studies like this from several courses, we hope to collate a set of experiences that could be useful to colleges across Scotland seeking to improve learner outcomes.
How to get involved!
To be involved in this project, please discuss with relevant colleagues across your college and students’ association, and contact Justin Walker.
