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1.
In an increasingly complex landscape of diversification and massification, universities are grappling with challenges of student attrition. This paper presents findings from a project investigating how students from low socio-economic backgrounds at a regional Australian university perceive challenges and supports associated with retention and success. Twenty-seven students received intensive one-to-one support from a Faculty-embedded ‘academic advisor’, and reflected on this support, their overall student experience, and strategies to enhance student success. Students identified a range of challenges that they experienced across an academic year (personal circumstances, lack of preparedness for university study, timely access to support, course/programme difficulties) and what worked well for them (academic advisor, University support services, growing confidence in self as competent student, peer support). A range of strategies for enhancing student success were identified by students, namely consistency across teaching design and delivery, transparency of delivery modes, mandatory orientation, access to a dedicated academic advisor, and increased peer connectedness. The applicability and viability of the proposed strategies within current higher education settings are explored.  相似文献   

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Tom Inkelaar 《Open Learning》2013,28(2):152-163
Graduation rates in distance higher education are low compared with full-time higher education – often less than 20% compared with full-time UK rates of around 80% – the ‘distance education deficit’. In the University of London International Programmes, the difference between the face-to-face graduation rate of 61.5% and the distance version at 15.7% is particularly marked. A previous paper in Open Learning reported evidence that ‘proactive motivational support’ to distance students had some effect on their success rates. This paper reports an attempt in the International Programmes to use proactive motivational support in the form of ‘motivational emails’ which found an increase in retention of 2.3%. Although this increase was small, it had a positive financial return on investment to the institution. The paper suggests that motivational emails could be made more effective through the use of interactivity, nudging and priming. However, it also argues that distance student retention will always depend less on technology and more on personal human support.  相似文献   

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Research shows that some non‐traditional students find the university environment alienating, impersonal and unsupportive. The ‘Quickstart’ project combines traditional lectures and seminars with a sequence of carefully designed online tasks, aimed at lessening the impact of the start of year uncertainties for new students. One thousand students across two geographic locations participated in the programme. The project was evaluated by considering three sources of data: data generated by server statistics of 40,358 successful requests for pages in the first four weeks of teaching; student anonymous responses to an online end of course questionnaire as well as extracts from their reflective journals; and the student experience as viewed through the eyes of a researcher in the classroom. Findings offer insights into how the students blend classroom time with their own time; and student perceptions of their own learning experiences. A collaborative learning experience involving travel to a contemporary learning space (the Tate Modern Art Gallery) mitigated the possible isolating effect of the use of technology; instead the technology enhanced the discussion and participation in activities. The students visited the Tate Modern and then facilitated their discussions by sending each other SMS text messages; they bonded very quickly in the seminar groups, where weekly online tasks that had been prepared individually ‘outside’ the classroom were the focus of group discussion and debate ‘inside the classroom’; their end of semester reflective writing showed very clearly how valuable the early ‘friendship’ groups had been for them settling into university life.  相似文献   

5.
This paper reviews some of the ways in which student success can be predicted in conventional and distance education. Predicting such success is particularly important for new students where the pre‐course start information available is sometimes slight and withdrawal often occurs very early in a course. It suggests that, in such cases, statistical methods involving logistic regression analysis are more useful than questionnaires or tutors’ opinions. Identifying students with low probability of success allows support to be targeted on them. However, there are ethical dilemmas to do with targeting support and openness with students about the results of any analysis.  相似文献   

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This article argues that in the drive to develop e‐learning initiatives in distance learning, simpler ways of supporting students for retention may be overlooked; for example, the linking of students in the form of mentoring and peer support networks. The article reports on three mentoring projects, in the United Kingdom, Korea and New Zealand, and shows that apparent retention gains of up to 20% with a return on investment of the order of magnitude of several hundred per cent may be possible. Whilst accepting the limitations of these studies, the article argues that there needs to be a clearer understanding of the benefits of such initiatives when deciding to invest time and funding in distance education support. It suggests that there is still much mileage to be made out of mentoring and ‘study dating’.  相似文献   

8.
ABSTRACT

Student attrition remains a persistent problem within the Australian higher education sector. Contributing factors include financial, reputational and quality issues, which can pose significant risks for a university’s sustainability. Institutional culture is fundamental to decisions student make about withdrawing or remaining in higher education. Therefore, student retention requires a sustained, deeply embedded commitment from all parts of the institution, placing student experience at the forefront of all activities in the student lifecycle. Applying a lifecycle approach to the way in which institutions think about student retention benefits students by providing comprehensive and consistent support. Given that less is known about how professional staff contribute to student academic learning journeys as part of whole of institution responses to student retention, this paper focusses on the contributions that professional staff make within the student lifecycle and how they can most readily map their contributions to student retention and success.  相似文献   

9.
Alan Tuckett 《Open Learning》2013,28(2):160-163
This case study relates to distance learning students on open access courses. It demonstrates the use of predictive analytics to generate a model of the probabilities of success and retention at different points, or milestones, in a student journey. A core set of explanatory variables has been established and their varying relative importance at different milestones identified. The explanatory variables, milestones and reference points when the model is run will be different at other institutions but the approach may be generalised to distance learning institutions and, more broadly, to any HE institution. Institutions, and especially distance education institutions which do not have the advantages of frequently seeing students, need to make full use of any recorded information they hold to try and identify students who are, or become, at potential risk of leaving. The importance of different factors, at different milestones, may help tailor student support to individual students and therefore improve low retention in open access distance education.  相似文献   

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Understanding persistence in adult learning   总被引:4,自引:1,他引:3  
The paper summarizes recent data on the retention and non‐completion patterns of adult students, especially those over the age of 25 who have had a gap since completing full‐time education. While data on further and higher education suggest that older learners are less likely than younger ones to complete longer, qualification‐bearing programmes, central statistics do not distinguish between students in their early‐to‐mid 20s, many of whom still have much in common with those in their late teens, and those in their 30s, 40s and 50s whose lifestyles, learning goals and aspirations are often qualitatively different.

The section on retention data is followed by a summary of the reasons for not completing courses commonly cited by adults learning in conventional education settings, and reflection on whether these are significantly different from those cited by younger students and students in open or distance learning programmes. The paper ends with a summary of the kind of factors that might increase adult retention rates in both kinds of learning programme.

For the purposes of this paper, ‘adults’ are defined as those over the age of 25 who have had a gap since completing full‐time education.  相似文献   

12.
ABSTRACT

This article explores university students’ constructions of the ideal student at present-day university, that emphasises student-as-consumer culture and employability rather than education as a virtue in itself. The research is based on thematic narrative accounts (n = 67) generated in a generalist field in one regional Finnish university. We apply a narrative-discursive approach to analyse how ‘traditional’ young students (n = 34) and ‘non-traditional’ mature students (n = 33) position themselves in relation to the ideal good student in a present-day university and in relation to their university studies. Moreover, we examine some of the consequences of such positionings for the students themselves. Our analysis indicates that the present-day university student is constructed in line with the ideal student of the neoliberal order and student-as-consumer culture. However, whereas mature students positioned themselves as customers and were comfortable with the demands of today’s university for self-directedness and self-responsibility, younger students positioned themselves as ‘school pupils’ and were critical about being left on their own without adequate support. The study suggests that the terms ‘traditional’ and ‘non-traditional’ make differences related to age and different kinds of student positionings visible and, thus, also possible to reconstruct the ideals and normalities of the present-day neoliberal university.  相似文献   

13.
Factors which impact student retention in tertiary level teaching courses are complex. This study examined facilitating factors and barriers to student retention for students studying education. Due to a limited number of studies, the search was extended to factors impacting students undertaking tertiary education. A systematic review was undertaken using databases such as, ‘Ebscohost’, ‘PsycARTICLES’, ‘Academic One File’, in addition to the University of Melbourne’s ‘Discovery Search’, which resulted in 34 studies meeting the eligibility criteria. The identified factors were first allocated to one of three categories that was identified in previous research as influential on student retention: situational, dispositional, and institutional factors. These three factors were then extended to include sub-factors to more fully define the model of facilitating factors and barriers identified through the systematic review.  相似文献   

14.
This paper takes critical lenses to interpret what students find enjoyable in their learning in specific ‘subject’ environments within the prevailing socio-economic climate in higher education. It considers student dispositions that emerged from dialogues with two groups of students attending a non-traditional university and taking vocational degrees within England, UK. We argue that although each higher education institute can become its own destiny, it can only do so within the boundaries of state policy and its technologies. Higher education, when affected by cultures of ‘performativity’, is arguably focused less on knowledge for ‘emancipation’ and its own sake and more on the ‘use value’ of its products. This paper argues that what is valued by these particular students in their learning and what gives them positive feelings as they engage with this process of learning is not altogether independent of the current governances shaping higher education.  相似文献   

15.
This article investigates students’ understanding and students’ experiences of access and success at a Higher Education Institution. There is a growing discourse around how students at Higher Education Institutions experience access and success. These discussions are imperative so that educational practices, university systems and processes as well as educational development initiatives can be tailored to meet the needs of all students. This specifically relates to issues of how students access the university, both epistemically and culturally and what their stories of success are in their path to and through the university. Qualitative research methodologies have been used for data collection and analysis. This article describes a six-month pilot study, which falls under the Siyaphumelela (‘we succeed’) student success project. In this pilot, forty-five interviews were conducted with undergraduate students. This article is underpinned by Tinto’s theory of integration. Moving away from the discourse of unprepared and underprepared students, our approach advocates that institutions prepare better for students who have not had the advantage of acquiring the necessary skills and knowledges that would assist them to be successful in their higher education journey. This study has found that the institution is already providing services which are much needed by students for their success. However, an extension of these systems needs to take place so they reach the entire student population. Our approach in this project is holistic because we understand that how students experience access, success and student centeredness is intricately linked to becoming university students.  相似文献   

16.
Diversity, understood in a multiplicity of ways, has been a focus of attention in education in recent years. As in many other countries, recent post‐school education policies in Aotearoa/New Zealand have emphasised previously under‐represented ethnic groups, such as Māori and Pasifika. The intention has been to widen participation in further and higher education (FHE) as a means to improve the country's economic performance in a global market. However, the same policies imply a deficit discourse – where diversity is perceived as a problem or deficit to be ‘fixed’. As part of a larger study into FHE student retention, 137 teachers were surveyed to identify what they did to cater for the learning of these ‘diverse’ students. The responses varied. For example, some insisted that, to be fair, all students had to be treated the same; others described teaching/learning approaches they used to ensure students succeeded. Five positions were identified in the data: universal, universal/group, group, group/individual, and individual. These positions are discussed and linked to Banks's cultural‐pluralist and assimilationist ideologies. It is argued that FHE teachers could draw on strategies from each of the three main positions to enhance student learning.  相似文献   

17.
This paper draws on data from a research project that was funded by the UK's Higher Education Academy. The project focused on the experiences of disabled students in one English higher education institution, and a key feature of the project was to attempt to access the perspectives of ‘non‐declaring’ disabled students. This paper draws on the experiences of one of the ‘non‐declaring’ respondents, Anna, a postgraduate student. In the UK, some students declare their disabled status on entry to a higher education institution, some do so once at the institution and some never let the institution know of their impairment. It is the perspectives of this latter group that are particularly difficult to access. Anna's experiences as a postgraduate student provide some insight into what may affect decisions about declaration of impairment. Drawing on a social‐relational understanding of disability, factors that influenced her decision not to ‘declare’ and the consequent effect on her experience of higher education are explored.  相似文献   

18.
Speech pathology students enrolled in a lecture‐based gross human anatomy program completed two out of nine topics in self‐directed mode. Student performance in quizzes was compared for the two modes, and the students completed questionnaires on their perceptions of the self‐directed mode of delivery. Students performed as well in the first self‐directed topic as they did in lecture‐based material, but performance declined significantly on the second self‐directed topic. Correlations showed that students who performed well in lecture‐based topics also performed well on self‐directed topics. The major issues that arose in the student questionnaires were primarily related to the amount of content in the topics and the length of time required for completion. We conclude that there is a strong need for appropriate design of distance education materials to reflect student perceptions of length, content, and time investment, and more importantly that there is a need to ensure extensive communication and support of students studying in distance education/self‐directed modes for the first time. Anat Sci Ed 2008. © 2008 American Association of Anatomists.  相似文献   

19.
Internationally, first-year student experience surveys suggest that modern students are investing increasingly less time in their study at university, raising concerns about the impact this may have on their success. This paper describes a case study exploring student workload at a New Zealand university interested in understanding how student time allocation decisions are being made during actual weeks of study rather than hypothetical ‘typical’ weeks. The results show that the sampled students allocated time in line with university expectations. Time allocation on course work was significantly affected by assessment deadlines and by student achievement striving. Student grade point average was strongly correlated with time spent, and strongly influenced by students’ beliefs regarding their motivation and self-efficacy. Universities are encouraged to explore mechanisms that support students being better informed about the implications of their choices, actively influencing their sense of priorities and expectations regarding the effort needed to be successful in their studies.  相似文献   

20.
Recent developments of the Italian student body are marked by an increasing diversification of prevailing student profiles. The presence of ‘new’ student groups is surveyed next to the groups which are the ‘traditional’ target of national policies for higher education and student welfare. Examples of such traditional target groups are, amongst others: males or females; students from well‐off and well‐educated families or from lower social backgrounds; resident or non‐resident students; undergraduate, graduate or postgraduate students (first, second or third cycle of university studies); students from different fields of study. Working students are to be quoted in ‘new’ profiles. They may either work regularly or take occasional jobs during terms; in both cases they no longer seem to be full‐time students and should be considered as de facto part‐time students. Although student work is not a novelty, what has changed in recent times is its development: working students are reported to be a majority in the university student body. Their emerging needs and expectations as university customers point to inadequacies and delays in the prevailing academic attitudes and in higher education policy‐making. The Italian Euro Student Survey is a monitoring of students’ living and study conditions in Italian universities. It is carried out in the framework of the Euro Student Report project, which involves many EU countries. Euro Student attaches great importance to the analysis of the impact of the diversification issue on the students’ living and study conditions, on their personal experiences and on their relations with academic institutions. Some of the most relevant emerging trends will be dealt with in this article, e.g. the demand for support and interaction with teachers and students (the ‘solitude’ issue), the increasing demand for better conditions in the study environment (the ‘quality’ issue), the differences in average academic achievements of different student groups (the ‘performance’ issue). Based on the updated available data, some ideas and theories will be explained as a conclusion about the possible impacts of the most recent reforms in the higher education sector in Italy, i.e. the design of new courses according to the ‘Bologna process’ and the planning of a new student welfare system.  相似文献   

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