Retention
HEFCE/Paul Hamlyn Foundation retention project - What Works?
In 2008 CDoTL secured funding (£183,033) from the joint HEFCE/Paul Hamlyn Foundation student retention grant programme to carry out a three-year collaborative project with Oxford Brookes University. The project focused on different approaches to supporting students through personal tutoring and study advice and via a one-stop shop with a view to ascertaining the effects of these on student retention and ultimately progression through higher education.
This project was completed in August 2011.
Findings and recommendations include:
Our findings indicate that support provided by the institution plays a key role in ensuring students' progress and a more positive student experience overall. Our key findings show that providing structured support, fostering engagement, managing expectations, enabling a sense of belonging are all central in helping institutions to retain their students. We have found that:
- Students are more likely to engage with the study support and personal development available from the institution if they are easily accessible and students feel there is a reason to engage.
- The building of relationships, particularly between Personal Tutors and their tutees, helps retain students.
- Staff members who operate as Personal Tutors want to feel valued in the role and rewarded for it.
- Holistic models of study advice and personal development are effective in making students feel they are supported towards success, whether these models are delivered across the university (Reading) or locally in an academic School (Oxford Brookes).
We recommend:
- That all support for students is easy for them to access in terms of physical access, ease of referral from others, ease of knowing who is available to help, transparent guidelines and boundaries and in terms of promotion and marketing information.
- Contextualised study advice. The context could be school-based (as at Oxford Brookes) or centrally delivered but focused on the academic discipline (as at Reading).
- Personal Tutors receive more support from their institutions in terms of training and guidance materials, but also in terms of reward and recognition.
- A one-stop shop approach to delivering student services on campus and via a physical and virtual Helpdesk.
- Access to support for new students begins before they enrol via a web link, blogs and other virtual information/communication tools.
- Identification of students 'at risk' be based on their engagement and performance after enrolment and especially over their first term/semester, rather than based on a pre-selected set of potential indicators.
Any enquiries should be directed to Sarah Morey, project manager s.morey@reading.ac.uk