Enhancing Teaching Effectiveness: Explorance French Europe Summit Insights

At the recent Explorance French Europe Summit 2025, held in Paris, Explorance launched a new insight report, Driving Standards, Supporting Outcomes: How Can We Enhance Teaching Effectiveness and Optimise The Student Experience?

Driven by insights taken from a subject matter expert panel discussion, the report features in-depth contributions from leaders at:

All of these institutions are embedding student feedback into institutional decision-making, curriculum development, and quality assurance practices.

In commissioning the report, Explorance, with a growing number of partner universities, business schools, and other specialist institutes in France, observed the following course evaluation trends:

Student feedback mechanisms: There is an increasing trend in the use of course evaluations and student feedback mechanisms to ensure the quality of teaching. Many universities have implemented regular surveys where students assess their courses, instructors, and overall learning experience. The feedback from these evaluations is used to refine course content, teaching methods, and overall program design.
Consistency and formality: Despite progress, there is still inconsistency across institutions regarding how course evaluations are conducted and how the feedback is utilized. While grandes écoles and some universities have formalized course evaluation systems, other public universities still lag in consistently using student evaluations for course improvement.
Accreditation influence: The requirements from accrediting bodies, such as HCERES, have pushed institutions to incorporate quality control mechanisms, including mandatory course evaluations. These external evaluations encourage institutions to be accountable for their teaching practices and continually improve based on student and faculty feedback.

5 Key Takeaways from the French Summit 2025 Report

1. Student feedback is transitioning from a compliance tool to a strategic asset

French higher education institutions are moving beyond viewing evaluations as regulatory checkboxes and are increasingly embedding student feedback into curriculum design, teaching practice, and broader institutional strategy. However, the extent to which this shift is systematized and effectively resourced varies significantly between institutions, with many still grappling with implementation challenges.

"We find that in every institution, we have roughly the same concerns, but we must recognise that what is really driving the formalisation of evaluations are the requirements of accreditations. One of the particularities of the French education system is the 'grandes écoles' are much more advanced than universities in terms of evaluation. There are sometimes a few universities that are pioneers and a few schools that are lagging behind, but in general, the culture of evaluation is more present in the 'grandes écoles,' particularly in business schools. This is precisely because the grandes écoles have been under greater pressure to provide evidence to accreditors."

Pascale Borel, Professor of Marketing and Member of the Quality Services Project Team, Clermont School of Business

2. Response rate fixation can undermine the purpose of evaluation systems

While institutions have made progress in deploying comprehensive survey tools, overemphasis on response rates risks eclipsing the goal of actionable feedback. Some leaders argue that even feedback from smaller cohorts can yield meaningful insights, especially if engagement is embedded in teaching culture. Moving away from numeric targets towards genuine dialogue is seen as a more sustainable approach.

"For me, the sacred return rate is one of the biggest talking points. What I always say very provocatively when I am asked to talk about return rates and the return rate that we observe, is that I always answer: 'Between 0 and 100%.' I always give the same answer because, in fact, these return rates do not mean anything. It is sold as an argument, almost as a marketing tool … Yes, we can go from 0% to 5%, or from 10% to 20%, but is that really the important element? 100% is unrealistic, unless it is subject to a contract, but then we can question the quality of the response."

Thibault Nélias, Head of the Pilot Support Service, Le Mans Université

3. Closing the feedback loop remains a critical weakness in many systems

Despite broad efforts to gather student feedback, most institutions struggle to demonstrate how student input translates into institutional change. The lack of consistent follow-through and communication with students contributes to disengagement. Strengthening this loop through transparent reporting, faculty development, and visible change is essential to reinforcing trust and participation.

"We have a lot of evaluation reports, but we do not have time to process them all. For quantitative data, we do a very simple descriptive statistical analysis and analyse changes over four years. However, without an AI tool, we do not do qualitative analysis. Our questionnaires systematically include open-ended questions, but we do not process them at all, so for now, we let the recipients read their full documents ... With students, there is really work to be done to close the loop, in the sense that it also stops when the evaluation reports are sent."

Laurence Besançon, Head of the Student Life Observatory (DIRFOR - Planning and Evaluation Division), Aix-Marseille Université

4. Institutional culture and leadership significantly shape the success of feedback systems

Where student feedback is most impactful, it is supported by strategic leadership, clear governance structures, and co-designed practices. Engagement from faculty, integration with institutional planning, and the presence of enabling technologies (e.g., dashboards, AI tools) all play a role in accelerating the cycle from insight to action.

"Engagement comes from participation and a shared vision, rather than a top-down approach. Why do you want to do an evaluation, for what purpose, what kind of information or signals are you looking to obtain? From there, we develop your questionnaire, and from your questionnaire, we develop how we process the data in reports and how we share, cross-reference, and analyse the information. For me, this is key to how we involve teaching teams … We explained to the teachers that they had to involve their students, make them actors."

Thibault Nélias, Head of the Pilot Support Service, Le Mans Université

5. A more holistic, dialogic, and adaptive model of evaluation is emerging

Institutions in France (and beyond) are recognizing that teaching effectiveness and student experience cannot be improved through surveys alone. Complementary mechanisms such as focus groups, teaching unit councils, and feedback-driven curriculum review are being used to foster a culture of continuous improvement. Future progress will depend on balancing quantitative data with rich qualitative insights and aligning feedback systems with institutional missions and student expectations.

"Students can give their opinion via course questionnaires, during teaching unit councils where the evaluation summary is discussed, during the three bodies in which they are represented, but also during the annual training evaluation. The complementarity between surveys via our survey management tool and physical exchange times during teaching unit councils, once the analysis report has been established, works well even if this practice is not yet systematic."

Bernard Teissier, Head of Library and Digital Learning Resources, ENTPE

What's Next in Teaching Effectiveness Innovation

To support their mission around teaching effectiveness and optimizing the student experience, French higher education institutions are engaging specialist feedback software solutions to capture those all-important data-driven insights. They include:

-Explorance Blue, a fully integrated platform that helps institutions automate the collection, analysis, and distribution of insights from their feedback initiatives, is being widely adopted in France.

Explorance MLY, which uses purpose-built, industry-leading AI technology to empower organizations and their leaders with a deeper understanding of student or employee needs and expectations, can support French universities' needs around analyzing qualitative student feedback.

Both Blue and MLY seamlessly integrate with institutions' existing learning management systems. Aligning teaching, student experience, and institutional outcomes under a unified strategic framework, underpinned by innovative technologies, is a robust and forward-thinking approach.

Read the full report by downloading your copy:

About the author

Phil Smith

Contributing Writer

Phil is a specialist PR, communications, and stakeholder engagement consultant with 22 years' experience in both in-house and consultancy roles. He support universities, multi-academy trusts and schools, as well as commercial organizations targeting the education sector, to support their profile, reputation and business development objectives.

How to Enhance Teaching Effectiveness: 5 Key Takeaways From French Higher Education Institutions

5 Key Takeaways from the French Summit 2025 Report

1. Student feedback is transitioning from a compliance tool to a strategic asset

2. Response rate fixation can undermine the purpose of evaluation systems

3. Closing the feedback loop remains a critical weakness in many systems

4. Institutional culture and leadership significantly shape the success of feedback systems

5. A more holistic, dialogic, and adaptive model of evaluation is emerging

What's Next in Teaching Effectiveness Innovation

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