MySurrey Engagement

Your rating will be within one of six categories: high, good, partial, low, very low or none.

• High and good: frequent access to digital resources
• Partial, low, very low: you are engaging with digital resources less frequently
• None: you have either not engaged with any digital resources, or your rating cannot be calculated. If you have a none rating and you are certain that you have accessed digital resources, please contact the IT Services helpdesk. 

The University attendance policy expects students you to attend your timetable teaching session and you are strongly encouraged to use MySurrey Attendance to check-in to your classes.

Using MySurrey Attendance enables you to reflect on your attendance in a similar way to the rich data available on your MySurrey Engagement dashboard.

MySurrey Engagement is used by Personal Tutors to reach out to all students and provide additional support if required, but it also gives you an opportunity to self-reflect.

Your rating is impacted by your interactions with many University digital resources, including:

• How often you log onto SurreyLearn and view course content, taken part in discussion posts and quiz attempts
• Your e-textbook usage (Bibliu)
• Viewing captured content on Panopto.
• We are also starting in some Schools to capture attendance at timetabled sessions using the MySurrey Attendance app, this is time will start appearing on the attendance tab in MySurrey Engagement.

Your current engagement rating looks at the last 24 hours but also considers your activity over the previous 7 days, whilst your average rating looks at the last 28 days of activity. It can change daily, so we recommend checking it every day or at least several times a week so that you can see how you are doing.

Multiple studies have shown that students who achieve the highest grades are often the ones that have engaged the most in the wide range of learning and teaching opportunities available. You have a much better chance of progressing and succeeding when you make the most of the opportunities available to you, including attending timetabled teaching sessions, using the Library and watching back captured content on SurreyLearn.

We have always had access to data about your engagement, but we have never been able to put it into a user-friendly dashboard view before. MySurrey Engagement does just this.

It will also allow the University to spot when there may be students who might be struggling and reach out to offer a helping hand and get you back on the right pathway for you.

More information about the correlation between engagement and achievement can be found in the following articles:

JISC, undated. Case Study One: Predicative Analytics and Nottingham Trent University

Summers, R., Higson, H. and Moores, E., (2021) ‘Measures of engagement in the first three weeks of higher education predict subsequent activity and attainment in first year undergraduate students: a UK case study’, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 46:5, 821-836, DOI: 10.1080/02602938.2020.1822282

Ratings are updated every night. You can also use the Learning Journey Map to see your rating over different self-selected time periods.

First of all – please don’t worry. The platform is there to stimulate you into getting back on track, and there are plenty of ways to do this.

Recognising that there is more you could do is a great first step. We recommend speaking to your personal tutor next, who would be happy to chat to you about what you can do to improve your rating.

Remember – students with higher engagement levels are more likely to succeed. Make the most of the opportunities, resources and services available to you!

The engagement rating is not a reflection of your value. The engagement rating is simply an indication at a point in time of how you appear to be engaging.

A conversation with your Personal Tutor and/or relevant academic will help to ensure that you feel valued and that you are on the right track towards success.

If you spot something wrong in your student profile:

• Ensure your personal information is up-to-date on Surrey Self-Service
• Speak to MySurrey Hive if it is still incorrect.

If you have issues with accessing the platform, or something technically wrong please contact the IT Services helpdesk.  

If you believe you have engaged much more that your dashboard is showing, we suggest in the first instance you speak to your personal tutor, and then the Student Success team.

MySurrey Engagement will still produce an engagement score during your placement. However, we fully appreciate your engagement score may drop during this time, depending on your programme.

A limited number of University staff have access to the data presented in your dashboard. These groups include:

• Personal Tutors and Senior Personal Tutors – this will allow them to have more informed conversations with you and give you the support that you need
• Student Success Team – for students who may need some additional support to reach their potential, our Student Success Team are here to help you analyse, interpret and improve your rating.

Other students, including course reps, will not be able to see any of your data – they will only be able to see their own.

All of the information available in MySurrey Engagement is already available via many different University systems. By bringing it all into a user-friendly dashboard view we can work together to make the most of it and find ways of improving your engagement.

The University will not use the platform or data for any student disciplinary purposes. The focus is on using the information to empower you to make the most of your time at Surrey and to enhance our student support services and allow them to engage more proactively and at an early stage.

It is also important to note that the data does not take into account any demographic information and does not measure socio-economic disadvantage. Your rating is purely based on your activity.

Access to MySurrey Engagement data by students and staff at the University will be in line with all relevant policies, including but not limited to:

• Student Engagement Code of Practice
• Data Protection policy
• Information Security policy
• IT Acceptable Use policy.

All of these policies can be found on MySurrey website.

The design of MySurrey Engagement has been fully reviewed for accessibility. This includes:

• Accessible colour schemes
• A choice of two contrasting themes
• Effective enlargement options
• Large text with a high contrast ratio
• Text-based content which can be read-aloud by a text to speech reader.

If you experience difficulties in terms of accessibility, contact Disability and Neuroinclusion.

We understand that everyone will have different personal circumstances and learning styles. Please discuss this with your Personal Tutor.

The University attendance policy expects you to attend your timetabled sessions. However, from time to time this may not be possible.

MySurrey Engagement is a great tool to help you have a discussion with your Personal Tutor or Programme Leader about your learning engagement. 

Penalties will not be applied based on your engagement (including attendance).  We would recommend a discussion with your Personal Tutor and/or relevant academic to find the right level of engagement for you.

There may, however, be consequences if you consistently engage below a level necessary to succeed, and this level will always be specific to you at that point in time. Your Personal Tutor should agree any goals with you that you should be aiming to achieve.

Using SurreyLearn is just one measure of how engaged you are with your learning. The engagement rating is a reflection of your overall learning style, including viewing captured content and e-textbook usage.

The algorithm which determines the engagement rating will be adjusted to reflect the relative importance of all seven resources and additional resources will be added over time. The weighting can be seen in your MySurrey Engagement dashboard.

Therefore, having one resource underrepresented will not be material in the engagement rating and this will become evident in discussions with your Personal Tutor.

We understand that these platforms and data may make some people feel this way. But we want to emphasise that it's only there to give you useful feedback and allow you to make decisions to give you the best chance of success.

If you are feeling anxious then we would recommend having a chat with your Personal Tutor about what you could do to help this.

We understand that some courses/departments use resources that aren't included in the current resources on MySurrey Engagement. We are currently collating a list of these resources, so we can look into how these resources can be included in MySurrey Engagement.

The engagement scores also take into account specific departments' learning styles (for example Guildford School of Acting, and Music and Media), to ensure that the engagement calculation is adjusted to better suit the ways that different schools/departments work.

In the event of University strike action causing your timetabled teaching session to be cancelled, the event will no longer appear as a timetabled session you were scheduled to attend and therefore you will not need to check-in or log your absence. 

If you are unable to attend due to other strike action (for example train strikes), and you have no other alternative to get to campus, you should report yourself as absent.

Your daily engagement score is generated based on 7 days' worth of activity, across a number of learning resources, therefore missing one day of timetabled sessions will have minimal impact on your daily engagement score providing you are continuing your studies with online learning such as SurreyLearn, captured content and e-textbooks (Bibliu).

If you have a question about using the platform, please refer to the video and user guide in the first instance. If you still have questions, please discuss with your personal tutor. Should have a technical issue, please contact the IT Service Desk.