Strategies to Improve Retention

1. Strategies to Improve Retention Anna Round University of Northumbria September 2004

2. Six strategies for student retention • Know your students • Make sure your students know you • Integrate your solutions • Integrate your students • Encourage awareness of ‘culture’ (‘habitus’) • Encourage awareness of limitations

3. Know about your students - recruitment • Recruitment: - Who chooses your course? And why? Demographic characteristics (e.g. Age? Generation?) Academic characteristics (e.g. Qualifications? Subjects?) - Which students will get something out of your course? I’d like them to be interested in… I’d like them to be OK at… I’d like them to have the following goals…

4. Know about your students – on course - What do students do all day? How do real students study? How much money do they have? What about part-time work? - What do students expect/believe about university? What are they looking for? - What do students think they should be doing?

5. Know about your students • Recognise and respond to student diversity • Recognise ‘vulnerable times’ for drop-out • Recognise characteristics of vulnerable students Targeted support strategies (e.g. diagnostic testing) Generalised support strategies

6. If they don’t drop out…where did it all go right?

7. Get to know your students • Academic contact: - ‘My tutors care about my academic progress’ - ‘The tutor is putting work in… I need to put some work in’ - ‘I can ask questions – I might not be so bad at this after all’ • Social contact with tutors: - ‘My tutors care about me as an individual’ - ‘My academic life and my social life can be integrated’ - ‘I can ask questions – I might not be so bad at this after all’ - ‘University is somewhere I can feel relaxed’

8. Where are your students? • Monitor attendance - Early alert to problems - Structured, individual, directed follow-up - A useful ‘small scale’ individual acknowledgement - If they aren’t there… they aren’t integrating • Formative feedback - Early alert to problems - Confidence building and skill building - A useful ‘small scale’ individual acknowledgement - Low-risk opportunity to ‘do academic things’

9. Many academics worry that students don’t see themselves as scholars… many students worry that universities (and academics) see them as ‘the bottom line’

10. Make sure your students know you… • How to advertise ‘jeans and holidays’: - Less is more - A picture is worth wordsn - Change your image, not change your life (“get” not “do”) - Buy this now and something else next week • How to recruit students: - What will they do? Words, pictures, discussion, experience - How will they do it? " " " " - Why do they need to do it? Why might they enjoy doing it (even if they’ve never heard of it)

11. Make sure your students know you - ‘Staggered’ information flow - Strategic timing of information - Easily accessible information - ‘Situated’ information - Individualised information - Clear statement of STAFF responsibilities - Clear statement of STUDENT responsibilities - Who’s who and who does what - Get STUDENTS talking to STUDENTS - Address the big questions head on…

12. Integrate your students • They need to be there • They need to know what they are doing there (times, places, deadlines, activities) • They need to have some idea of why they are there (aims, goals, rationales, enjoyments…) • They need to have some idea of who they are • They need to know the other people there

13. Integrate your solutions Some ‘unintegrated’ approaches… • ‘Add a course’ solutions • Lack of consultation • ‘This is an issue for student services’ • The ‘technofix’ Why integrated approaches work… • Students integrate their experience (every contact sends a message) • Students operate a cost-benefit analysis • All aspects of university experience impact on retention

14. Awareness of ‘culture’/ ‘habitus’ ‘A system of lasting, transposable dispositions which, integrating past experiences, functions at every moment as a matrix of perceptions, appreciations, and actions, and makes possible the achievement of infinitely diversified tasks, thanks to analogical transfers of schemes permitting the solution of similarly shaped problems’ Bourdieu, P and Passeron, J (1977) Reproduction in Education, Culture and Society

15. University culture and retention If staff and students have different ideas about: • What students should be doing • What staff should be doing • What a university should be doing … it will be difficult to provide a coherent student experience and some students will get ‘left behind’ (but most will successfully pick it up as they go along!)

16. Cultural ‘Change’ - Cultural Awareness? • Fluency in the ‘culture’ of HE is essential for student success • Different HEIs have different ‘cultures’ • Different subjects & departments have different ‘cultures’ • Different members of academic staff may have different ‘cultures’ • Academics and other university staff may have different cultures

17. Student cultures are formed by… • School / previous education • Home and family • Peer group • Wider society/culture/media • Policy … and will be DIFFERENT for every student

18. Student cultures determine… • Expectations of university • What students want from university • How students approach their academic work • How students interact with academic staff • How students interact with one another • How students talk about university • How students define themselves as students

19. Competing cultures • Scholarly • Scholarly community • Social expectations • ‘Apprenticeship’ • Practical • Business/transactional • Consumer • Instrumental • Dutiful • Drifting

20. Putting cultural awareness to work… • Clear, open staff discussion of institutional, course and student culture (acceptance of diversity) • Practical links between underlying features and academic practice (the problem with mission statements) • Meet mismatches head on (with staff and students) • Listen and compromise • Be aware of ongoing changes

21. The limitations • Numbers – drive for recruitment • Numbers – staff : student ratios • University resources • Changes in student finance • Staff morale • Poor pre-entry guidance • Universities (and subjects) don’t construct their own image