Taking sound bites with a pinch of salt: pause and understand institution-specific staff and student experiences.

At a time of increased investments in virtual learning environments (VLEs), it is critical that we make change decisions based on a sound understanding of the true experiences of our staff and students.

Adopting a mixed-methods approach, the University of South Wales is undertaking a large-scale evaluation of staff and students’ experiences and learner outcomes during the 2020/21 academic year. Combining students’ demographic and outcomes data with learning analytics data is enabling a depth of outcomes analyses. Supported by qualitative surveys and focus groups, the emerging results are helping us contextualise wide-spread soundbites about the positive impact of the pivot online for some learner groups.

We will share our approach and emerging observations. By the end of the session participants will recognise the possible opportunities and challenges of using multiple data sources to inform large-scale VLE change proposals.