Universities
Mediadesign Hochschule · Student study
“How do you really understand a highly international student body?”
The project
A student body this international brings a wide range of expectations, circumstances and needs. mdh wants to understand what its students are working on, what motivates them, where they run into obstacles and what support they need from their university. Language should not decide who gets to explain their view in full.
Zeitgeist Labs is developing a multilingual research approach in which students describe their experiences freely, in the language they prefer. The interviewing system is briefed on mdh’s curriculum, services and culture, so the conversations can go deep even with a very diverse international community.
The Intelligence Dashboard brings these perspectives together systematically, so that they can be examined by group and by question. The result is more than a general impression. It shows in detail how different groups experience the university, and where it could act: on the organisation of studies, student support, the range of courses and campus life.
At mdh, students of a great many nationalities come together, with different expectations, needs and ways of working. If we really want to understand this community, we need new ways of talking with it. Zeitgeist Labs lets our students contribute their views in different languages and then connects those voices with other relevant data from the university. We do not simply get more feedback. We get a far more detailed picture of our university, and can make specific improvements from it.