Proposing a SX Model with Cultural Factors

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper is fully suitable for publication in Applied Sciences. It achieves all standards for a scientific paper and his subject and treatment are in agreement with the journal requirements.

The paper is wrote with a clear and entertaining manner. The references are suitables and updated.

Student experience is a topic that has not yet been addressed too much and is likely to become more important in the future. The article creates a new model of SX by adding the cultural component to the other three components.

Hofstede's cultural model chosen presents a checked framework with easily applicable SX dimensions, although it could be revised in future work to update some dimensions that may have become obsolete, such as "masculinity vs. femininity".

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

I accepted to review this paper because I expected that it would contain interesting results from field studies involving students. As far as I can see, the authors have not carried out any field studies, such as contextual interviews and observation, to guide the creation of their model and to verify their model. The article is purely speculative and builds heavily on other work by the authors which does not seem to be supported by field studies either. To me, this raises the burning question whether the whole article is a castle in the air. I encourage the authors to provide more details about the four-step approach outlined in the first paragraph of chapter 4 and in Figure 2. I further encourage the authors to validate their results, for example, by doing field studies or discussing the results with representative members of the target group.

ISO’s definition of user experience is “user’s perceptions and responses that result from the use and/or anticipated use of a product, system or service”  The authors’ definition of SX is: “all the physical and emotional perceptions and reactions that a student or future student experiences in response to interaction with products, systems or services provided by a HEI, and interactions with people related to the academic field, both inside and outside of academic space.” This definition originates from [1]. While the definition of UX focuses on “a [particular] product, system or service,” the authors’ definition of SX aims at “[any] products, systems or services provided by a [Higher Education Institution], and interactions with people related to the academic field, both inside and outside of academic space.” The authors’ definition is very broad and therefore difficult to manage and describe in a paper. To me, SX as defined by the authors comes close to Human Experience in general.

I think that there is a substantial risk that the content of the article may be biased by the authors’ cultural background. The three authors are apparently all males from Chile and Spain. I live in Northern Europe. Without having conducted any research myself, I feel certain that my undergraduate students, in particular female students, would be rather upset by the stereotypes underlying for example Table 4, Gender and Sex on SX.

Minor comments:

- Figure 3 would be easier to understand if the abbreviations PD, IDV, etc., were explained in the caption.

- The article references [1] eleven times. [1] is written by two of the authors of the paper under review. [1] seems to focus on undergraduate students. The current article does not mention this reasonable limitation. Is this an oversight?

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The manuscript describes the concept of Student eXperience (SX) as a subset of Customer eXperience (CX) and presents the three dimensions of SX: Social, Educational and Personal. The authors point out that there is a lack of research that considers cultural aspects as a factor in the SX dimensions. The authors propose a holistic SX model that includes culture as a factor related to the SX dimensions, with the goal of developing solutions that improve the quality of education and overall well-being of students. Below are my comments and concerns.

1.       The study is focused on a specific case of Student eXperience (SX) in a Higher Education Institution (HEI) and may not be generalizable to other types of educational settings or customer experiences.

2.       The study presents a proposal for a holistic SX model that includes culture as a factor, but it is not clear how this model has been tested or validated.  Therefore, it is unclear if the model has been validated through any statistical methods such as SEM or any other model. It is also not specified how the study will measure the impact of cultural factors on the SX dimensions, which is a necessary step in validating the proposed model.

3.       The study does not specify how the model will be used to measure the impact of cultural factors on the SX dimensions, which is necessary for validating the proposed model.

4.       The study does not mention any data sources or sample information, which limits the understanding of the current state of the problem and the generalizability of the proposed solution.

 

5.       The study may not have sufficient evidence to support the hypothesis that incorporating cultural factors into a holistic SX model will improve the perceived quality of Higher Education Institutions, student academic performance and retention rates.

 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

I appreciate the authors’ responses to my comments.

However, I continue to believe that the article is basically flawed because it mainly presents unverified opinions by the authors. To me, this raises the burning question whether the whole article is a castle in the air.

I encourage the authors to re-submit their article after validating their results, for example, by doing field studies or discussing the results with representative members of the target group.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors adequately answered all my queries and revised the manuscript as required.

 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf