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All In: Students Deciding

How Can Student Unions Make Better Decisions Together

Elinor Indich
Elinor Indich
April 20, 2022

For the elected student union, the start of the school year is much like a poker game where you are forced to do an all-in. Here, student unions need to grant full support for the many challenges faced by students, create a strong community and allow for student initiatives.

In a dynamic world, where decisions have to be made in a short period of time but with a real connection to the reality in the field, the head of the student union and his team need to get quick insights from the field in order to make better decisions. A mistake can cause them to waste an entire year, which would be a shame. The questions on the table are many: what basic services should they promote or change, what do you do with food in the cafeteria or how do you face broad issues in an academic institution.

These are the places where Insights technology can help.

Tel Aviv University Student Union Nailed It

TLU Students Union Consulting Website

In the student union of Tel Aviv University, they decided to promote the building of a community on campus. Other universities in Israel, such as Ben Gurion University and The Hebrew University in Jerusalem succeeded in creating such a community, but at the time, TLU didn’t.

The head of the student union, Gilad Arditi, understood that another poll wouldn’t help anyone. The polls indicated there was a problem but didn’t show how to create a solution. The union decided to create the solutions with the students themselves.

It was a quick process, which included many teasers, and thousands of text messages and emails sent to all students on campus. The members of the students union wanted to reach those who were not online and approached students in the entrance to the campus and lawns. At the end of the day, more than 2,000 participants and 1,000 replies allowed the union to make decisions together.

Among which, the union took upon itself to support students in their first year on campus by creating a more comfortable environment for students in their first 100 days. It worked.

So How Do You Start?

Gather your union team for coffee and define the main result which you would want to promote. Try to think where the union has the most significant impact on students, and what you would want to see at the end of your term (You can read about this in our help center).

Did you focus on one subject? Now you need to phrase an open question, and in a press of a button you could reach all your students and get meaningful insights in a short time. It could be over in two weeks.

Got your insights? Now it’s time to approach them, make a decision and get going. Every moment counts.

Students Deciding TogetherElinor Indich
Elinor is a success manager in Insights.US. In the last year, she assisted many public institutions to gather insights from their crowd and lead change.