Reducing Analysis Time from 3 Weeks to 5 Minutes at Kingston University with Explorance MLY & Blue

About Kingston University

Kingston University is home to a diverse community with more than 20,000 students from 140 countries. Its commitment to high-quality teaching, providing an outstanding student experience and supporting students to achieve successful degree outcomes has been recognised with Gold ratings in all three categories of the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF). It is one of just 26 higher education providers from across the United Kingdom to achieve this. Through its sector-leading Future Skills programme, students develop the human-centric skills most valued by employers, alongside their subject-specific learning.

The Challenge: Modernising and scaling the student feedback process

In 2017, Kingston University took the strategic decision to reintroduce Module Evaluation Questionnaires (MEQs) to its student surveys portfolio.

Although initially administered on paper, with Explorance Blue the MEQs transitioned to an online-only format within 18 months. A critical aspect of this was the integration of Blue with Canvas, the University’s Virtual Learning Environment.

Fast forward to 2024, and Kingston signed up to Explorance MLY to support its analysis of National Student Survey (NSS) and MEQ comments.

The Solution: Efficiently collecting, analysing, and acting on large volumes of student voice through Explorance Blue and MLY

• Blue

Module evaluation questionnaires are one of four institutional evaluations which fall within the remit of the University’s Student Voice team. Using Blue, the University reviewed all MEQs in 2023 to bring them in line with new NSS questions.

“MEQs are an important means of collecting data and student feedback on modules and the student experience,” explained Student Voice Manager Rebecca Hampstead. “At Kingston we take an integrated approach to systems, data and metrics. We have integrated the Explorance Blue software with our data warehouse, student records system, and Canvas; integrated MEQs into the Annual Monitoring and Enhancement process; and integrated MEQs into the wider institutional conversation around metrics, both internal and external. Our approach has improved access to and understanding of our MEQ data, and how we have been able to improve the student experience as a result.”

In July 2024, the Student Voice team extended the application of Blue by launching the Graduation Ceremony Experience Survey to support the University’s events team with its mission to enhance graduation ceremonies.

“Explorance Blue has been a really successful module evaluation tool for over eight years at Kingston University, and we expanded its use to start to tap into its full potential as a student experience insight platform,” Rebecca said.

“We want to make sure we are giving students the best graduation experience we possibly can, but to do that we also need data to drive informed decision-making and to understand everything from graduates’ experiences of the ceremony itself to the photography service and gown hire. That is done in the form of the Graduation Experience Survey which, following a low response rate when it was reintroduced on Microsoft Forms, is now being run in Blue to boost engagement and automate processes.”

• MLY

Kingston first saw MLY demonstrated at Explorance’s Student Voices in Higher Conference in 2023 before implementing the solution in 2024. That summer the University used MLY to analyse NSS and module evaluation comments. Adding MLY to the university’s feedback ecosystem, Kingston also rolled out access to MLY dashboards for staff to access AI analysis.

Rebecca shared: “We chose MLY for several reasons: speed, consistency and efficiency – it was easy to use, quick to implement, and delivered significant time savings and staff capacity gains. It is also designed specifically for higher education; originally built for universities, MLY was aligned with our needs. In addition, data security was a key factor, as our data remains with us. Finally, we were excited by its integration potential, particularly given our existing use of Blue for surveys and the possibility of future integration between the two platforms.”

She revealed that before using MLY, two staff members reviewing the 3,321 comments received in response to the 2024 National Student Survey would take three weeks. With MLY, that same process takes around five minutes. “We used to manually code NSS comments in spreadsheets,” Rebecca said. “Analysis took considerable time and resources and prevented us from providing insight quickly. MLY meant that for the first time ever, we were to provide on-the-day qualitative insights for leadership.”

On MEQs, Rebecca added: “With 26,340 comments received in module evaluation surveys in 2023-24 alone, we had never fully analysed all module evaluation comments centrally, and capacity for central analysis was very limited. By NSS standards, it would have taken us around 26 weeks to do so. With MLY, analysis of the comments took around 15-20 minutes, which meant that we were able to provide qualitative insight for module evaluation comments in top-level reports for the first time ever.”

The Outcome: Enhancing student experience through real-time feedback analysis

MEQ engagement peaked in July 2025, with Blue enabling easy tracking of live responses and detailed analysis from institution to module level.

“Fundamentally, what Blue has given us is the ability to enhance the student experience through accurate, accessible data,” Rebecca explained. “By using the data from Blue in our internal dashboards, this enables us, as a team, to continuously monitor the student experience across our provision at every level, focus more easily on areas for improvement, and empower staff to enact change more readily.”

Having successfully introduced MLY, Kingston is able to undertake analysis on the NSS for the first time ever, as well as analysing MEQ comments.

Summarising the benefits of MLY, Rebecca said: “By saving time and identifying areas of low satisfaction more quickly, MLY enables real-time analysis of feedback and more timely responses to that feedback. It removes the need for manual comment coding, freeing up our time to focus on strategic priorities, while delivering more efficient and consistent insights to improve students’ experiences. With staff access to MLY analysis, ownership of insight is embedded within different areas across the University.”

In November 2025, Kingston received the ‘Passion’ team award at the Explorance Customer Excellence Awards to mark these achievements.