Recent ICAS survey highlights CA Students' priorities
Key findings from our 2021 Student survey are helping to develop an action plan to respond to feedback and meet Students' needs.
You may be aware that ICAS has increased its listening programme in the last few years. This takes a number of forms such as online surveys, workshops and one-to-one research interviews. We include all of our various customer groups: CA Students, Members, Firms and non-member key influencers.
By monitoring these views, we can make evidence-based decisions that will help to shape improvements and increase satisfaction with the services we provide.
What our CA Students told us recently
Recently we commissioned an online survey which was sent to all CA Students. Some of the key findings have been listed below.
- The most important areas for Students are ‘quality of materials’, ‘content of the syllabus’ and ‘ICAS reputation’.
- The areas with the highest satisfaction are ‘ICAS reputation’, ‘content of the syllabus’, ‘quality of ICAS materials’ and ‘online based teaching’.
- More Students consider the new online learning format to be successful vs unsuccessful with those finding it unsuccessful citing lack of interaction with lecturers, problems with technology, and late/slow communications from ICAS.
- 40% of Students still prefer classroom-based learning over online learning but around the same amount, 39% of Students, prefer online learning to classroom-based learning.
In this wave we continued to gather information on diversity so that we can ensure our boards, committees and strategy cater to our CA Students’ and Members’ diverse needs.
Acting upon the feedback
An action plan is now under development to address the findings of this research. Some of the key points for improvement have been listed below.
- Reduce email response times to provide a timely and accurate response to your questions.
- Explore additional ways that we can further support you and your wellbeing. We recently launched a Student Assistance Helpline as part of our Mental Fitness strategy.
- We are hoping to increase social interaction opportunities for Students and will be launching TC induction events and exploring virtual study groups in September 2021.
- Include EDI themes to ensure learning materials and methods are inclusive, to help Students develop the skills needed to become the inclusive leaders of tomorrow.
- Seek to further incorporate sustainability within the CA syllabus as part of our annual syllabus update process.
- Deliver our Learning Transformation program which aims to improve the Student experience by developing a range of new resources such as module guides, interactive PDFs, podcasts, panel discussions and infographics.
- Ensure that we listen to your views in various ways throughout the year.
Thanks for your input
We are grateful to all CA Students and Members who have taken the time to get involved with recent surveys and related initiatives, and we would encourage you to please try to help if you can when requested in the future. We really do value and act upon your feedback.