Promoting student success

Mantz YorkeLiverpool John Moores University

m.yorke@livjm.ac.uk

London South Bank University21 January 2005

The general plan

1. Policy context

2. Retention/completion

3. What the Action on Access studies found

4. Formative assessment

5. Employability

6. Who can do what? (Emphasis on institutions)

The ‘impossible pentagon’

Five policy ‘desirables’

• Widened participation

• High completion rates

• Higher quality of HE provision

• Higher standards of student performance, including employability

• Lower cost

What drives institutions?

Fear of poor performance indicator statistics?

Funding streams?

Desire to enhance students’ achievement?

30

25

20

15

10

5

00 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45

% non-continuation, 02-03, English HEIs

% SEG IIIm - V, 01-02

30

25

20

15

10

5

00 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45

% non-continuation, 02-03, English HEIs

% SEG IIIm - V, 01-02

LSBU

30

25

20

15

10

5

00 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45

% non-continuation, 02-03, English HEIs

% SEG IIIm - V, 01-02

30

25

20

15

10

5

00 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45

% non-continuation, 02-03, English HEIs

% SEG IIIm - V, 01-02

30

25

20

15

10

5

00 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45

% non-continuation, 02-03, English HEIs

% SEG IIIm - V, 01-02

r = 0.65

LSBU

US degree attainment rates

% completing bachelor’s degree

Institution type within 4 years within 6 years

Private university 67.1 79.6

Public university 28.1 57.7

Public college 24.3 47.4

Nonsectarian college 56.3 66.2

Catholic college 46.4 60.2

Other Christian college 51.0 61.3

All 36.4 57.6Astin & Oseguera 2002

Yorke 1999a Davies & Elias 2003

N = 2151 FT/SW N = 1510 FT/SWResponse rate 32% Response rate 10%

Wrong choice Wrong choice

Academic difficulties Financial problems

Financial problems Personal problems

Poor student experience Academic difficulties

Dislike environment Wrong institution

Poor institutional provision

Why do students leave?

Yorke 1999a Davies & Elias 2003

N = 2151 FT/SW N = 1510 FT/SWResponse rate 32% Response rate 10%

Wrong choice Wrong choice

Academic difficulties Financial problems

Financial problems Personal problems

Poor student experience Academic difficulties

Dislike environment Wrong institution

Poor institutional provision

Why do students leave?

Voices 1

My A-levels were geared towards accounts and economics, and I just carried on in that direction and didn’t think of anything else. I should have researched it all a bit more. ‘HD’, in Davies & Elias (2003, p.32)

… I wasn’t having a particularly happy time personally and I just thought I’ll do what the school says, and once I actually got to it [the institution] I realised that maybe it wasn’t the only option and maybe I could be happier doing something else …‘Irene’ in Longden (2001, p.30)

Voices 2

Academic staff, on occasions, had a tendency to project themselves as being very pushed for time, stressed out and could not fit you into their timetable of work. No matter who you turned to, or when you seeked (sic) someone’s aid, they seemed to be busy.Student reading Science, in Yorke (1999a, p.40).

Voices 3

My main reason for leaving was finance. I soon realised that once I had paid my rent for the year, I would have no money left. Didn’t want to leave the university owing ’000s of £. So got a job. Student reading Humanities, in Yorke (1999a, p.44)

… I was forced to work PT which ate into my studying time and my relaxation time. This generated a lot of stress for me … My commitment to the course was affected. I didn’t feel that studying an Art degree subject with little career/job assurance justified the severe three-year struggle required to achieve it.Student reading Art and Design, in Yorke (1999a, p.45)

Voices 4

I was amazed by the ‘big city’. I started clubbing regularly, took more and more drugs, became increasingly more ill, lost weight, became paranoid. I messed up in a very big way. One minute I was on top, the next rock bottom. I came from a cushioned background and believe if I had maybe waited a year or two and learnt more about the reality of life, then it would have been a different story.Student reading joint Arts and Social Science, in Yorke (1999b, p.32)

Intentions,goals,

commitments

Academicexperiences

Social experiences

Integration

Intentions,goals,

commitments

Departuredecision

Pre-entryattribute

s

Tinto, 1993

Entry Envir Psychological Intermed Attitudes Intent’n BehavCh’cs Interact Process Outcome Outcomes

PastBehav

Person’y

InitialAttribs

NormatBeliefs

CopingStrategs

Motiv’n

Skills &Abilities

Bureau

Academ

Social

External

Self-Eff

CopingProcess:Approach/ Avoid’ce

Attribs:L of C

+veS-E

Stress &Confid

InternalAttrib &Motiv

AcadInteg &Perf

SocialInteg

Inst’lFit

Loyaltyto Inst

Intentto Persist

Persist

Institutional Environment

Bean & Eaton, 2000

Problems with models

• Slippery concepts and terminology

• Multiple theories

• Varied foci of attention

• Linearity

• Rationality

• Predictiveness

Intentions,goals,

commitments

Academicexperiences

Social experiences

Integration

Intentions,goals,

commitments

Departuredecision

Pre-entryattribute

s

Weak empirical support

Stronger empirical support

Psych ofIndiv

Institutionalcontext

Adventitioushappenings

Broadersociety

I meant, there’s no end to understanding a person

All one can do is understand them better,

To keep up with them; so that as the other changes

You can understand the change as soon as it happens

Though you couldn’t have predicted it.

TS Eliot ‘The confidential clerk’

Understanding

Studied what HEIs with high proportions of

‘WP students’ were doing

6 HEIs that were beating retention benchmarks

9 other HEIs with high WP levels

Action on Access

Demonstrated the potential in

• Commitment to the student experience

• Pre-entry and early engagement with students

• Curricula attuned to widened participation

• Making the curriculum a social arena

• Allocating resources preferentially to 1st year

• Emphasising formative assessment, esp. in Sem. 1

Action on Access studies

Work on

• formative assessment • employability

offers some pointers

Formative assessment …

implies no more (and no less) than a discerning judgement about [a] learner’s progress; it is ‘on-going’ in the sense that it goes on all the time; and it is formative in so far as its purpose is forward-looking, aiming to improve future learning (as distinct from the retrospective nature of summative assessment).

Greenwood et al. (2001, p.109)

A typology of formative assessment

Probably the mainapproach in HE

Where circumstancespermit

Via peer assessmentactivities

Over coffee or inthe bar

Problems if assessoris mentor, supervisor

In work-basedsituations

Only if an assessmentrequirement

Where student is acting self-critically

From Formal Informal

Teachers

Peers

Others

Self

Formative assessment

Black and Wiliam’s meta-analysis showed a size effect of 0.7

… formative assessment does improve learning …

The gains in achievement [are] among the largest ever reported for educational interventions.

Black and Wiliam (1998, p.61)

Weaknesses (Subject Review etc.)

In 49 per cent of cases, marking systems could be improved particularly in respect of feedback to students.This sometimes lacked a critical edge, gave few helpful comments and failed to indicate to students ways in which improvement could be made.

QAA (2001, para 28: Subject overview report, Education)

See also QAA (2004) Learning from Subject Review, Learning

from higher education in further education colleges in England

and QAA (2003) Review of 33 Foundation Degrees

Towards greater autonomy

Probably the mainapproach in HE

Where circumstancespermit

Via peer assessmentactivities

Over coffee or inthe bar

Problems if assessoris mentor, supervisor

In work-basedsituations

Only if an assessmentrequirement

Where student is acting self-critically

From Formal Informal

Teachers

Peers

Others

Self

Its development is aligned with good learning, and

hence with the development of student success

The four-component USEM approach has been found

useful in thinking about student development

Employability

U Understanding of subject and broader situations

S Skilful practices in subject, employment and life

E Efficacy beliefs and personal qualities

M Metacognition

USEM

Employability;broader personal effectiveness

Subjectunder-standing

Meta-cognition

Skilfulpracticesin context

Personalqualities, includingself-theoriesand efficacybeliefs

E

S

U M

USEM

Some relevant theorists

Bourdieu & Passeron (1977): cultural and social capital

Flavell (1979): metacognition

Salovey & Mayer (1990): emotional intelligence

Pintrich & Schunk (1996): motivation

Bandura (1997): self-efficacy

Sternberg (1997): practical intelligence

Dweck (1999): self-theorising

Biggs (2003): constructive alignment in pedagogy

…

This theoretical plurality suggests whysimplistic attempts to improve studentsuccess are unlikely to be successful

This theoretical plurality suggests whysimplistic attempts to improve studentsuccess are unlikely to be successful

There is no simple causality

Evidence for E and M: effect sizes

Meta-analyses Size N studies

Self-system (E of USEM) 0.74 147

Metacognition (M) 0.72 556

Marzano (1998)

Who can do what?

• The system

• Institutions• Students

The system

• Operate a post-qualification admissions system

• Do not over-privilege research

• Use the QA system to ensure threshold quality

• Relax about completion statistics

• Make student funding system simpler

• Ensure that policy initiatives do not conflict

What can institutions do?

Wrong choice

Academic difficulties

Financial problems

Poor student experience

Dislike environment

Poor institutional provision

• Assist student decision-making

• Enhance the student experience

• Promote student engagement

• Help students to cope with the demand…

• … and with failure

• Deal sympathetically with adventitious events

What can institutions do?

• Provide good information to prospective students

• Welcome all students in the information provided

• Recruit realistically

• Advise according to the student’s best interests

Student decision-making

The student experience: general

• Be welcoming

• Engage with students before they arrive

• Encourage a sense of belonging

• Make induction effective

• Provide a ‘one stop shop’ for support services

• Help students to become ‘streetwise’

• Treat HE as a predominantly social process

• Promote the development of teaching expertise

• A culture of learning

• Programme structures likely to engender success

• Teaching approaches likely to engender success

• Assessment for learning

• Make the 1st year/level relatively resource-rich

The student experience: academic

• Respond to students’ existing knowledge-level

• Ensure that students know what is expected

• Use formative assessment early

• See failure as a developmental opportunity

• Be supportive when disaster strikes

• Understand the pressures on today’s students

Helping students to cope

• Choose programmes wisely and unhurriedly

• If uncertain, take time out

• Be motivated towards their programmes, & engage

• Understand that regurgitation is not enough

• Take note of, and act on, formative assessments

• Be prepared for low initial grades

• Use poor performance as a stimulus for learning

What students should do

that change is easy to propose

Remember

that change is easy to propose

but

not so easy to implement

Remember

Institutions cannot guarantee student success, not

least because students have to contribute their effort

Epilogue

Institutions cannot guarantee student success, not

least because students have to contribute their effort

We can, however, ‘bend the odds’ in favour of success

Epilogue

Institutions cannot guarantee student success, not

least because students have to contribute their effort

We can, however, ‘bend the odds’ in favour of success

We have to act with intelligence in the ways in which

we design our educational provision, and in the ways

in which we respond to our students’ needs

Epilogue