PTES 2026 will be open from Monday 2 March until Thursday 30 April.

Taught postgraduate students are eligible to complete PTES if they:

• did not enrol in January of the same year that PTES is running
• are not in their first year of part-time study

Eligible students include degree apprentices and those studying on 100% online courses.

Professional doctorate students

Previously, professional doctorate students were asked to take part in the Professional Doctorate Experience Survey (PDES). This was an internal survey created specifically for professional doctorate students, but it meant benchmarking results against the rest of the sector was not possible. To receive benchmarking data, PDES has been discontinued and professional doctorate students will now be eligible for existing sector-wide surveys.

Students in their research phase are eligible for the Postgraduate Research Experience Survey (PRES). Students in their taught phase of study are eligible for PTES when PRES is also running.

You can see who is eligible by viewing the target population on the PTES SharePoint site.

You can see the questions asked in PTES. They include:

• teaching and learning
• engagement
• community
• assessment and feedback
• organisation and management
• on-campus and online learning resources
• support
• skills development
• two free-text comment questions

Constructive feedback

Students appreciate it when you provide detailed, useful and constructive feedback on their assessments to help them improve their marks next time. Similarly, receiving this type of feedback from students will help you better understand what changes could be made to improve your course. Characteristics of constructive student feedback include:

• honest
• specific
• respectful
• solution-focused
• includes the good and the bad
• how to do better next time

Students' comments must be in line with the University's Dignity & Respect Policy and Procedure. We encourage you to report offensive or discriminatory comments to your Head of Department and the Student Engagement Team by emailing studentengagement@bath.ac.uk

A link to the PTES 2026 survey can be found here. Students will also be able to access the survey via a QR code, which will be found on the PTES SharePoint. They will also receive emails from ptes@bath.ac.uk.

To access the survey, students will need to enter login credentials. These are:

• their University username (without @bath.ac.uk) as the Respondent ID
• their 9-digit student number, which can be found on their library card and SAMIS profile, as the Password

PTES 2026 will be open from Monday 2 March until Thursday 30 April.

The University's target PTES response rate for full-time students is 50%. Having a higher response rate means the results are more representative of your cohort and you can more confidently make decisions about if, and how, you make changes to enhance the student experience.

The University has best practice guidance and promotional resources to help you promote PTES to your students.

The most effective way to promote student surveys to your students is allocating time in a teaching session, ideally in-person, to explain the importance of the survey and the changes that have been made as a result of previous students' survey feedback and let students complete the survey there and then. This could be in a mid-lecture break.

Highlight to students that they could win a first prize of £250 cash or second prize of £70 cash if they enter the prize draw by the survey closing date.

You can view PTES results for the University and the rest of the sector by downloading data from the PTES SharePoint or reading Advance HE's sector reports.

Responses are confidential to the Student Engagement Team but are anonymised before being released to the wider university. The anonymised responses will be discussed and used in Staff / Student Liaison Committees (SSLCs), Departmental Education Action Plans and committee meetings.

Think about how to close the feedback loop with your students next academic year. This could involve:

• telling incoming students about changes that were made as a result of the PTES feedback
• familiarising Academic Reps with the data in the first SSLC of the academic year
• checking in with students about how their experience is going and if any quick fixes could be made