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Socialisation to Address Retention. Heather Sayers Mairin Nicell University of Ulster. Background. Approximately 150 full-time year 1 students enrolled on a number of courses S tudy conducted in 2009-10: Investigating transition from secondary to higher education
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Socialisation to Address Retention Heather Sayers MairinNicell University of Ulster
Background • Approximately 150 full-time year 1 students enrolled on a number of courses • Study conducted in 2009-10: Investigating transition from secondary to higher education • Findings included: lack of social integration • CHEP-funded project to investigate the effect of incorporating social and team-building activities into year 1
Activities • Semester 1: • Studies Advice • “Meet your Studies Advisor” • Sports Centre: team-building activities • Semester 2: • Night out with David Meade in the Students’ Union
Evaluation • Studies Advice • 92% participation • Staff feedback through Course Committees • All staff had met most of their allocated students individually following the initial event (80% of respondents attended) • Student questionnaires: • 76 responses (58%) • 79% - useful for meeting Advisor • 59% - useful for meeting other students
Evaluation • Positive feedback: • “Useful because my advisor gave me advice and checked up on how I was doing” • “Useful to voice opinions and concerns about my course” • “Useful because issues I brought up were resolved” • Negative feedback: • “Waste of time. I had no problems” • “Not useful – told things I already knew” • “Not useful other than for tracking purposes”
Evaluation • Team Building: • 17 of the 76 respondents had attended these events • All who attended had positive responses: • “I believe it helped me to get to know others and become friends” • “I got to know who was in my course and got talking to some of them” • “It was a bit of craic and made me relaxed with people I didn’t know” • Issues: • Timing
General Feedback • Final questions focused on how well students have managed to get to know others, and by what means. • Findings: • Knew others from school • Talking outside class • Sports (2) • Tutorial and group laboratory work (55%)
Suggestions • Nights out • Planned for semester 2 • A week of events prior to classes beginning • More group assignments • More team building in week 1
Conclusions • Better progression statistics for semester 1 than for the previous year • Many other factors could affect this • Further investigation required to compare cohorts from 2009-10 and 2010-11 • How to measure the effect of actions taken