On Friday, November 26, 2021, an online symposium was held to provide an opportunity to compare

Hiroshima University with the world's top research universities and reflect on the university's education and services from an academic and student support perspective through the results of the SERU student survey. The event was a great success, with 122 people registering.
The symposium began with an opening address by Executive Vice President Makoto Miyatani, followed by an explanation entitled "What is SERU" (reference material: "What is SERU".pdf) by Professor Satoshi Watanabe, Globa

l Strategy Advisor and Visiting Professor (Center for Research and Development of Higher Education), Tohoku University. In his explanation, he mentioned that in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, the University of California, Berkeley, which represents the SERU Consortium, took the lead in developing the COVID-19 Special Survey to investigate students' experiences of the pandemic and that since January 2021, an upgraded version of the the SERU student survey is being conducted at SERU Consortium member universities around the world. He also touched on issues such as establishing systems to provide feedback to the university.

Next, Yasukai Abe, UEA (Education Office) and Associate Professor Masataka Murasawa (Center for Research and Development of Higher Education) presented the analysis of responses to the SERU survey conducted a

t Hiroshima University in FY2020. UEA Professor Abe spoke about satisfaction with education and the correlation analysis with grades, while Associate Professor Murasawa spoke about exclusion and inclusion of diversity and heterogeneity and response (completion) rates.

Kenichiro Umeshita, Deputy Office Director and Senior Manager of the Office of Globalization, which is in charge of the SERU student survey, touched on some of the barriers that universities have faced in the wake of the novel coronavirus, such as the diversification of class formats, and introduced some examples of how students have used th

e SERU student survey to learn how they perceive the education and services offered at the university. Additionally, he explained the significance of capturing students' "voices" in the survey and the importance of improving the response rate.

Kotaro Takahashi, Assistant Director of Higher Planning Division, Higher Education Bureau, MEXT, in charge of the National Student Survey, gave a lecture on the National Student Survey (2nd trial implementation) scheduled to be conducted from the end of January to the end of February, 2022. He explained that he believes that the nation has a responsibility to provide more detailed explanations regarding the opinions raised by the students.
Dr. Igor Chirikov, who plays a central role in the SERU Consortium, presented the results of a SERU student survey in the U.S. on online learning and students' sense of belonging. (Pre-recording)
At the end of the symposium, Makoto Iwanaga, Vice President in charge of student support, gave closing remarks.
Hiroshima University will continue to analyze the survey results and improve its learning environment and education through establishing benchmarks with other leading universities around the world. To this end, we will promote the significance of the student survey such that as many students as possible at our university will not merely leave it to others but will be willing to make their own voices heard as students.