STAR Conference

Strategies for Student Retention

Report

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Dr Tony Cook
Project Leader
University of Ulster
Cromore Road
Coleraine
N. Ireland
BT52 1SA

Tel: +44 028 7032 4453

Executive Summary

Conference Report

Appendix 1- Participant Feedback

Appendix 2- Summary of the individual practice theme

Appendix 3 Summary of the Institutional Strategy theme

Executive Summary

General comments

The Strategies for Student retention Conference was detailed as an objective in the 2007 Teaching and Learning Strategy. This report is provided to “close the loop”.

The conference was held on 14-15^th June on the Coleraine campus. Details of the conference are available at www.ulster.ac.uk/star and will not be repeated here. The sessions in the conference were divided into two themes: Individual Practice and Institutional Strategies. These themes reflected the purpose of the conference: viz to further disseminate the outcomes of the STAR project and to inform the development of the Universities own Teaching and Learning Strategies.

Two summarizers were briefed to attend as many sessions within a theme as was possible and to provide a verbal summary in the last session of the conference and to provide the appended written summaries (Appendices 2 and 3).

There were about 130 attendees, about half from this University and the remainder from across the water.

The participant feedback was excellent with favourable comments being made on the organisation and general friendliness of the event and the opportunity to network. Keynote speakers were particularly praised.  Participants identified shared problems in student retention. These included general difficulties in getting practical managerial support for change and the effective dissemination of good practice. Less favourable comments were made about the building work (which was noisy) and the organisation of the poster session.

If we were to do it again we would:

• Hold it a week later to avoid all examiners’ meetings;
• Avoid all building work!;
• Embed the poster session in a morning session and extend the presentations into the early evening;
• Start the conference on the evening of the day allowed for “travelling” (the 13^th in this instance) to extend the time available for networking; and
• Give more precise instructions to those offering workshops.

Lessons from the presentations were:

The University of Ulster is clearly a “widening participation” University. This is determined by its mission statement and by its student profile. The University of Ulster does not “beat its retention benchmark” and still needs to learn from institutions that do.

Since all UK Universities select students, they have a responsibility to adapt to cope with the needs of all the students they admit.

Effective practices elsewhere include:

·         Attempts to mimic second level institutions in year one by “making the big seem small”;

·         The training and deployment of student mentors;

·         The use of “supplemental instruction”;

·         Influencing the expectations of prospective students by engaging them prior to entry; and

·         Supportive and timely feedback.

Strategies for Student retention

Conference Report.

The Conference was held on the Coleraine campus on the 14^th-15^th June 2007

The Conference organising committee (Tony Cook, Brian Rushton (STAR project), Clare Beagon, Clare Carter (Staff Development)) met monthly for the six months prior to the conference and worked through a checklist developed for the Challenge and Change Conference (2006).

Good things from an organisational point of view:

The Coleraine conference office made all the detailed arrangements and this worked extremely well. Staff Development handled the bookings very smoothly.

The provision of transport from the airport for visitors was much appreciated. It was relatively cheap and easy to arrange.

A good mix of outside people and UU staff prevented us from being insular and self-congratulatory.

Sponsoring a limited number of UU staff meant that most turned up. We were not left with empty seats at lunch/ dinner.

We sponsored 2 summarisers who led the last session. They were both excellent and their reports are appended (Appendix 2&3)

Attendance

There were 129 attendees, (59 from Ulster, 52 from England, 9 from Scotland, 6 from Ireland, 2 from the USA and 1 from Wales).  11 individuals who registered for the conference did not attend.  22 attendees had previously contributed to the work of the STAR project. There were 35 contributions to the conference, 13 from Ulster, 18 from England, 2 from Scotland and one each from Ireland and the USA.

Bussing visitors to and from the airport meant that they did not drift off towards the end of the conference and a good attendance was maintained throughout.

Feedback

A conference feedback sheet was supplied in the conference pack. The feedback was generally extremely positive, is detailed in Appendix I and summarised here. A typical comment was:

“This was one of the best organised conferences I have attended in some time.  It was interesting, well paced, and there was a general sharing of experiences and good practice.”

Comments were classified into themes giving the following results for each of the open-ended questions asked.

Which aspects were most useful to you professionally?

Lesson to be learned:

1)      The choice of keynote speakers is critical.

2)      In an inclusive conference like this both academic and non-academic staff need to be encouraged to participate.

3)      There needs to be plenty of spare time to allow delegates to chat.  The timings at this conference were too tight even though all sessions were chaired and held to a timetable

Which were the least useful aspects of the conference?

Lessons to be learned

1)      The poster session would have been better located perhaps during an extended tea/ coffee session rather than at the end of the day

2)      Different people come for different reasons and you cannot please all of them.

3)       Parallel sessions are good so that more speakers can be accommodated, but unless the themes are distinctive then this can be an inconvenience to some.

Most challenging and relevant issues

How to influence management to provide resources (3), STAR Gazing – a look forward  (3),  How to disseminate/ implement good practice (3)

Lessons to be learned

1)      Initiatives in retention are management dependent and require a sympathetic senior management to be actively supportive if they are to become embedded.

2)      Looking forward in a critical way is seen as supportive of change.

3)      UU is not the only institution to have problems changing practices among its academic staff

Other comments

Excellent 2, Enjoyable 6, Friendly  3, Stimulating  1, Well organised 2

Lessons to be learned

1) The effort put into planning pays itself back in terms of a relaxed atmosphere in which ideas can be freely exchanged. Happy delegates will remember.

Appendix 1

Participant feedback

Appendix 2

Reflections on the individual practice theme

Mark Davies, University of Sunderland

The STAR project, from its outset, has recognised and focused on the role of the individual.  In the main this is manifest in two ways.  First, institutional practices in relation to retention, and the strategies driving them, have individuals at their core.  Individuals shape strategy and policy and individuals carry through the institutional steer to their practice.  Second, individuals can and do make a difference at a local level by modifying practice, and at institutional, national and international levels by sharing the results of their endeavours.  During the STAR Conference we have seen both these spheres of individual influence in evidence.

To put the role or potential role of the individual into context, I propose a standpoint that could be said to be controversial.

·   “Students can achieve in higher education, since we have selected them on the basis that they will do so.  If they do not achieve then it is we as staff in higher education that are doing something wrong, or are omitting to do something.  It is not the students that are failing; it is us.”

So what can individuals do?

The STAR Conference yielded many examples of real-world differences that individuals can make.  These can be found in the Conference abstracts and repeating them here would not be productive, though I cannot resist emphasising the importance of giving appropriate, sufficient and timely feedback to students on their work.  A common reason given by students for dropping out of higher education is that they made poor choices of course and HEI.  There is thus a need (and I do mean ‘need’) to manage better the expectations of our students.  Personalising their experience is important too; a recognition that they are not raw materials going through a factory whose product is the graduate, but are individuals whose requirements vary.  Attention to the individual is difficult with limited resources but will produce a better product, something no doubt the corporate HEI is interested in.  Make the large institutional environment seem small.  Involve the students.  Modularisation has brought compartmentalisation of learning and while the prior experiences of some students will prepare them for this, an integrated approach (not incompatible with modularisation) may be developed and deployed early in the first term or semester to prevent conflicting messages from staff to students.

Commensurate with changes that individuals can effect is the need to think.  The STAR project has produced a number of outputs documenting good practice and individuals can use these and other educational literature as a starting point.  Can good practice be applied universally and be wholly transferable, or will good practice only ever work at the time and place it was developed?  The answer lies at neither pole, and judging exactly where an individual item of good practice lies is an individual decision, based on evidence and a good deal of thinking.  Thinking plays a role in evaluation too.  The STAR Conference stressed the importance of evaluating changes in practice, with the obvious outcome that if there is no evaluation then staff will never know the effect the change had.

Individuals should not be afraid of effecting change by experiment.  The STAR Conference heard of many successful experiments with a positive outcome in relation to the student experience or the headline retention figure.  We heard of some experiments (that ran alongside successful experiments) that had little effect on the student experience or the headline retention figure.  But the STAR Conference heard of no experiments that had a negative effect.  Is the sector really so successful, or do we not report what doesn’t work?  If the latter, then this is a pity because much can be learned from such outcomes.  Experimentation, whatever the outcome, is of great value and staff should not be afraid of it. Some of the benefits derive from the processes of proposing hypotheses and devising suitable ways to test them and not just the end product. 

The STAR Conference heard of many factors that were correlated with ‘retention’ and in many cases there was an underlying assumption that the factor caused the level of ‘retention’.  However, we should resist the temptation to imply cause where it is not demonstrated: factor X and retention may be related because they are both caused by something else.  Experimentation should reveal the true relationship.  Specific citations from students about what influenced their decision-making can form powerful arguments for ‘cause’ and make useful ammunition in persuading HEIs that the solution to factor X is worthwhile.

The worry for me is that my summary and message in the foregoing is not novel.  I have preached to the converted.  Naively, the STAR Conference participants could be seen as a group of enthusiasts.  If the building work at Coleraine had undermined the lecture theatre and we were all tragic victims of a health and safety oversight, who would continue the work?  Where are the practices relating to retention driven from in your own HEI?  Who does the work?  For many HEIs these functions are institutionalised or embedded.  But for others they are bolted on.  For a commitment to be made to the retention agenda, institutional ‘space’ is required in which changes can be made, and without such space, change will always be little by little.  Creating this space is a function of both the individual and of institutions.

Perhaps the most important role for the individual is in communication, championing the student experience and giving a clarion call to show how important the student experience is in retaining students.  You are the ambassadors.  The STAR Conference has limited value if only those on the ‘retention circuit’ get to hear about it.  A wider audience and a shared understanding of the issue of retention is needed (again I deliberately use ‘needed’) if we are to be a success for our students in the face of increasing participation rates in UK higher education.  So how do you get your colleagues, particularly academic staff, on board so that there are new faces at the next conference on retention or on the first year experience?  That defeats me, though you could experiment!

Appendix 3

Reflections on the Institutional strategy theme

Peter Roebuck,  University of Ulster

While the main focus of the STAR project has been on the role of the individual university teacher, this Conference articulated a widespread conviction in the sector that this role can only be rendered fully effective if it is exercised in the context of an explicit institutional strategy for teaching and learning.

The Conference was a considerable success.  A large number of practitioners from a variety of institutions participated throughout the proceedings.  They included not just university teachers, researchers in this area and representatives of management, but also others closely engaged in delivery, such as librarians and technicians.  Numerous examples were provided both of individual practice and of the emergence and development of institutional strategies.  During discussion of the latter several themes emerged clearly.

1.  The long-running debate over ‘standards’ at secondary level continues.  What is clear, however, is that sixth-form curricula and examinations as a preparation for third-level work are now markedly different (though not necessarily less exacting) than they were only a few years ago.  It is essential for universities to ensure that their staff are thoroughly familiar with these changes.  This is felt to be indispensable to the formulation of effective tactics and strategies at third- level.

2.  Some delegates indicated that ’for our students just to get to university is an achievement’.  This was quickly followed by an acknowledgement that ’we may need to recognise that some students are not ready for university, and may never be so’.  We advantage no-one by recruiting students in the absence of a clear conviction that they are in a position to benefit from the opportunity. The fundamental principle foreseen by the Robbins Report in the early 1960s must be sustained.

3.  Compared with the position a decade ago, we are now far more conversant with the nature of the challenges in regard to transition and retention: we know what the issues are, and ’most institutions have developed reasonable policies’.  It remains essential nevertheless to implement effective practice routinely and to survey student views regularly and systematically.  Are current methods of doing so sufficiently robust; and do institutions take careful heed of the findings? 

4.  As the keynote speaker from the United States graphically reminded us, challenges have become more formidable since the later 1980s as a result of the strong growth in student numbers.  Many universities are now twice as large, or more, than they were then.  Careful thought about the implications of rapid expansion must underpin practice if it is to be successful.

5.  ’Student behaviour is moulded by economics’, claimed one speaker.  Successive shifts in government policy - the freezing of maintenance grants in the early 1990s, their abolition and the introduction of contributions to fees in the later 1990s, and the recent advent of variable top-up fees - have led to radical alterations in the way of life of the student body.  Many so-called full-time students are now part-timers, spending much of their time and energy in employment to make ends meet.  Strategies must respond adequately to these new circumstances.

6.  Though institutionally difficult, it is essential to acknowledge that public policy, however unwittingly, has created among many academics a culture clash between teaching and research.  Not infrequently, methods of encouraging and promoting research - e.g. through the appointment of temporary staff to relieve researchers of other duties - are detrimental to the quality of teaching.  Few, if any, universities have resolved this dilemma or, indeed, seek to do so.  In devising forward strategies this issue must be squarely faced.

7.  The unanimous view of Conference delegates was that first-year students were the key target group, with several institutions contemplating ’the complete overhaul of Year 1’.

8.  In this regard, as in so many others, students themselves are our surest allies, in the sense that systems whereby Year 1 students are ’buddied’ or ’mentored’ by their predecessors are judged to be strikingly effective.

A brief summary of recommended action would be: ‘Concentrate on first-year students, and get other students, as well as all staff, involved in doing so.

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