Here Project Toolkit Cards

The HERE Project ToolkitThe HERE Project (2008-2011) researched the impact of doubting on student retention and appropriate strategies for course teams to adopt to help students remain and succeed.

This action card can be used by individuals, or preferably by course teams during reviews, planning events or team meetings to reflect upon their own practices and consider ways of improving retention.

Further information can be found at www.HEREproject.org.uk

The HERE Project was delivered by teams at





How to use these recipe cards

The HERE Project was funded and supported as part of the What Works? Student Retention & Success programme

There are nine sets of recipe cards, one for each of the recommendations contained in the HERE Project toolkit. The cards broadly describe the recommendations we make in the toolkit, but obviously in less detail.

They are designed to be a resource to be used as part of a staff development event, perhaps an away day or team meeting. We generally suggest exploring Recommendations 1,2 & 4 first, but the cards can be used in any order.

Simply print off the cards, cut them in half, spread them out on the table and use them to start a discussion. They are designed to get you thinking, to encourage you to debate the issues, not act as an absolute set of instructions. As such, they are tools for use: scribble notes on them, tear them up, use them as you see fit. If it helps stick, them onto the flipchart, drop them into a flowchart, do whatever you want if it helps get you

thinking.

We have found that in many programmes, simply making time to discuss the issues is valuable.

The recommendations are based on our interviews with programme staff, student surveys and our experience looking at student retention & engagement issues. They are ideas that worked for a particular programme at a particular time. We don't promise that they'll work in all situations and strongly suggest that you use them as a starting point only. You may disagree with the recommendation. As long as it engages you to think up a better one, the cards have played their part.

Good luck

The HERE Project team

HERE Project toolkit


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Recommendation 1 - Identify & respond to students at risk

We recommend:

Formal Data• Starting with institutional QA data; although

often the complexity of student withdrawal means that this does not contain the complete picture

• Ensuring that the whole programme team understands the current position with regards to student retention

• Considering gathering data at faculty/school level, even if only to provide greater details when discussing institutional withdrawals data

Informal Data• Allocating more staff to supporting first year

students to create more opportunities to pick up issues from students

• Allocating time to review both the formal and informal withdrawals data and actively look for warning signs, personal knowlege about why students withdrew and create time to consider interventions that might have helped prevent early withdrawal

We suggest that programme teams start by trying to better understand who the at risk students are, by using formal and informal data.


“Experience suggests that data gathered to fulfil quality assurance obligations are not always exploited optimally for the purposes of quality enhancement" (Yorke, 2006)

1.1 Understanding more about students at risk of withdrawing early


We recommend:

• Programme teams consider the at risk times for their courses and plan appropriate strategies to ease the transition or help new students to cope.

• Respondents to the HERE Project surveys consistently reported 'academic factors' as the main reason to doubt. However, social anxieties were much more prevalent early in the academic year. Fitzgibbon and Prior (2007) similarly found that students' concerns changed over time.

• In our studies the period immediately before and particularly after Christmas were times of high doubting. It appears that this is the period of first significant assessments, limited feedback and, after Christmas, the January blues.

Effective strategies for this time might include:

• Formative feedback and the fast turnaround of feedback

• Personal or small group tutorials

• Activities to allow students to reflect on personal progress and achievement since the start of the year

In the UK, withdrawal tends to be highest in the first term of the first year, but there are other risk periods too including January/February and exam times.


1.2 Monitoring 'at risk' times










We recommend that programme teams:

Monitor attendance• Start by agreeing what attendance will be

monitored. Clearly lectures are more challenging, but seminars, tutorials and workshops are more manageable.

• Communicate and discuss this strategy with the students.

Monitor engagement• Respond to other forms of disengagement,

particularly those that can be monitored easily

such as non-participation in online learning and teaching.

• Early patterns of non-attendance and disengagement may be more problematical, as students haven't normalised into routines of independent learnin, or have other tactors such as friendship bonds, or relations with tutors that will help them to stay. Monitoring engagement and attendance is therefore most important in the early stages. Teams may therefore choose to monitor it for the first term.

Disengagement can be a precursor of withdrawal. If a student stops attending, then it's potentially easy to simply slip away. The bonds formed by relationships with peers and tutors need time to build up, but it's also important that students don't simply fall behind in the course work too.


1.3 Monitoring engagement, not just atttendance


We recommend:

• That programme teams respond quickly and sympathetically to individuals who appear to be disengaging or actually withdrawing.

• This is likely to require some organisation and planning & the team need to agree who deals with these students. In our case studies, this was normally a named individual such as the programme leader, but there were clearly shared and understood responsibilities for the rest of the team.

• Teams also need to agree a strategy for

supporting individual students who are facing difficulties. Does this mean everyone in the team knows how to refer to central or school-based professional or study support?

• All teams ought to use the data to review patterns. Are there are difficult modules, or challenging assignments? Without watering down standards, what could be done differently?

• Teams make time to learn from experience of the year and prevent early withdrawal in future years.


1.4 Responding to students at risk

Understanding when students are disengaging is essential, but equally important is how the programme team responds.











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Recommendation 2 - Help students make the transition to being effective learners at university

We recommend that:

Programme teams review their induction practice.

• Do inductions start to both explain and provide an opportunity for students to practice the skills and approaches needed to cope with learning at university?

• Do inductions have an input from existing students to help newcomers understand the differences between college & university?

Teams use tutorials as opportunities to explore the skills and practices associated with HE learning.

• We suggest these ought to focus on academic development, seeing the curriculum as a whole, strategies for asking for help, conducting research and other pertinent strategies.

Periodically pausing whilst transmitting knowledge and encouraging students to reflect on your expectations of the processes taking place.

• For example, reviewing approaches to note making in lectures.

The differences between college and university are often significant and given more recent changes in the further education curriculum, far greater than has historically been the case.


2.1 Improving students' understanding about how HE is different to prior learning


We recommend that:

Programme teams seek to maximise opportunities for students to develop friendship/ peer support networks.

• For example build small group activity into the curriculum, particularly in the first term, and ensure that ice breakers and other structured social activities are built into the induction and early transition period (Cook & Rushton, 2008).

Programmes explore using student buddies or peer mentors (PAL or PASS in the UK) to support students, particularly early in the academic year.

• Of the two, peer mentoring is a more formal process that follows the curriculum, buddying tends to be less formal. Nonetheless, if you are using buddies, we would strongly suggest that they deliver timetabled activities such as campus tours to create a reason to speak to students in the first place.

The No1 reason cited by doubters for staying related to support from friends made at university.


2.2 Create an environment conducive to peer support “I understand the topics I have to do my coursework on and I know that if I don't, I can ask for guidance from my lecturers and PAL leader” (BU Student Transition Survey).










We recommend that:

Programmes use activities that explicitly explore expectations about assessment in higher education.

These might include:

• Use of exemplars, either whole pieces of work or sections introduced gradually over a period of weeks

• Staged construction of assignments, for example writing a literature review, discussing it in class and then using the feedback to shape the full

assignment

• Analysis of assessment criteria and disciplinary language/ phrases (for example what does ‘be more critical’ actually mean)

• Discussing whole group feedback in tutorials

• More formative assessment

• Some written assignments completed in groups rather than individually, or peer feedback on assessments

Doubters were less likely to report that assessments in HE were as they expected. It appears that significant numbers of students have problems comprehending our expectations of assessment.


2.3 Improving students' understanding of assessment


We recommend:

• Yorke (2003) makes a strong case for better use of formative feedback, particularly early in the first year to offer diagnostic advice to students

• Where possible tying discussion and action planning from formative feedback into tutorials throughout the year. Foster, McNeil & Lawther (forthcoming) noted that students were often able to accurately interpret feedback at the time it was given. However, even though comprehension was not particularly a problem, the process of action

planning was.

• Consider learning and teaching activity that encourages students to write reflectively about their progress

Student confidence appears strongly related feedback. Students who reported that feedback was not useful were more likely to be doubters.


2.4 - Making better use of formative feedback

“At the beginning of the course I was a bit overwhelmed by the amount of people who were clearly very smart and I found myself questioning my own academic abilities. After completing my first few assignments I convinced myself I hadn't done very well but I got good marks throughout the year as well as very detailed feedback so I was able to improve my work” (NTU Student Transition Survey).










We recommend:

• At least discussing options for structuring groups around their academic performance. It may be that this is useful for certain subjects that students can find difficult.

• Programmes devise ways to motivate and encourage students throughout the year. One programme, for example, highlighted student achievements in the university magazine and promoted this to first years, another sent letters of commendation to students who do well in the first year. Another programme publishes all

dissertations that receive a first in the departmental internet journal.

• One example suggested to the HERE Project is that all students on a programme are required to attend a timetabled weekly maths session unless they can complete and pass an online assessment on the VLE beforehand. This way, those who don’t need the additional support can focus elsewhere and those who need it can participate in smaller groups.

Given the high percentage of young people entering HE - is some kind of differentiation within the cohort at least worth considering?


2.5 Consider differentiation



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Recommendation 3 - Relationship and communication with staff

We recommend that:

• Students receive early communication from a member of the team, prior to arrival, and a face to face meeting during the first week with a member of staff that they will have regular contact with during the first year.

• Programme teams create opportunities to discuss the working relationship expected in HE and how it might be different from college. One programme surveyed for the HERE Project used

learning contracts to achieve this.

• Programme staff make an effort to learn the names and find out about their students from the start.

• Large cohorts are designed to feel small. For example at NTU, a tutorial system has been implemented specifically to achieve this aim.

• There is clear and repeated information about who students can speak to, reminding them about office hours etc.

It appears that in college, students are used to highly supportive relationships with staff. Whilst not advocating simply adopting that model, students do need help moving to a state of autonomy/ managing their learning independently.


3.1 Enhancing the staff/ student relationship


We recommend that:

• The programme adopts a whole team approach to retention, transition & engagement. It's not just the job of the programme leader or first year tutor. Everyone involved has a clear understanding about what their responsibility is, and this is communicated to students, both through formal documents and verbal communication.

• The programme team promotes communication,

for example during induction, or by putting up photos of team members along with their roles.

• Programme teams adopt a JEEJIT (Just Enough Education, Just In Time)(Cook & Rushton, 2008)approach to communicating systems and processes. Clearly it's important to communicate programme information during induction talks, but most students might benefit more from an explanation of how to submit coursework closer to the point of submission.

Many academic programmes are complex organisations with many academic and support staff playing different roles. Doubters were more likely to report finding the course disorganised, programme teams therefore need to consider how the whole team communicates to students.


3.2 Communicating with students about the programme










We recommend that:

• Programme teams review how they communicate about retention & problems. Could information be more effectively shared and are there opportunities to improve remedial actions?

• Teams monitor issues that might indicate

engagement (or disengagement) across the programme, for example, non-attendance or grades.

• Teams ensure that informal opportunities to discuss student issues are planned in to meetings.

Our experience with programme teams suggests that often there will be one or two staff members with good relations with & knowledge about the students, but that their knowledge is not necessarily widely known within the team. It became apparent during the HERE research that courses with good retention, made time to share and discuss information about students and plan strategies to support them.


3.3 Communicating within the programme team about students


We recommend that:

• Programme teams have an agreed understanding of how they will respond to student feedback and requests for change (clearly shaped by institutional policy).

• Programme teams emphasise formal and informal opportunities for students to raise issues and give an indication of how issues are normally dealt with.

• Students are encouraged to give feedback throughout the year.

• Notes from any agreed actions are well publicised and students are made aware of changes, or reasons why changes are not possible. Channels such as email, may be problematical, so verbal communication at the start of lectures, seminars, tutorials etc may strongly reinforce such communication.

There are more potential channels of communication to students that at any time in the past - face-to-face, email, SMS, tweets, Facebook. However, students can feel that they are not well communicated to, particularly when they have provided feedback or asked for changes.


3.4 Adopting a whole team approach to communicating changes to students













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Recommendation 4 - Help students make informed decisions about choosing the right course

We recommend that:

• When planning marketing, the team (or the wider university) considers the need to explain to students what learning on the course will be like. Clearly, open days and prospectuses need to operate as marketing tools, so how does the programme get across the experience of studying. It may be that asking first year students to write blogs, or video recording lectures and other activities may be the most productive approach.

How does the programme team then ensure that these are seen by students?

• Review with current students your marketing messages. Did they find that the open days portrayed accurately the nature of the course? Are there any ways that the programme could be made more 'real'?

Poor initial choice of course or university is often cited as a contribting factor in retention research. Logically, anything to help students better understand the nature of the programme ought to be beneficial.


4.1 - Using Open Days and other communication channels


We recommend that:

• Programme teams and the wider institution review how the university learning experience is promoted to future students. Quinn et al (2005) noted that many students lacked the cultural capital to understand that language used in standard marketing materials, therefore this may need separating from the marketing efforts.

• How does your team promote the essence of learning on your course to future students? The KIS appear to focus on outcomes and time, but how do you promote what learning will involve?

• Some students may find that exploring HE whilst still in FE is confusing. It may be that this information is released to students once they have accepted a place on your course.

Although not strictly helping students to choose a course, once they have accepted a place how can programme teams help students to start to consider ways to engage before they start?


4.2 Providing a range of information to students prior to starting their course

"I needed more detail on how I would be taught and the course content. And also the learning support that would be available. What are the expectations around essay writing for example? It's a big cultural shift."























Recommendation 5 - Improve social integration

We recommend that:

• Course teams look at the pre-arrival stage of the induction process (the period between students accepting a place and arriving at university). Stepping Stones 2HE (Keenan, 2008) and Starting at NTU (Foster et al, 2012) are both initiatives to encourage students to participate in pre-arrival tasks. These are usually short research tasks designed to help students start to think about independent learning, but can include

opportunities for students to talk to one another through social media such as Facebook.

• Clearly asking students to engage with social media can be problematical. Anecdotal evidence strongly suggests that, at this stage, students may be more likely to 'lurk'. Nonetheless, students report positively about the fact that an opportunity exists.

• It may be that student mentors are best placed to lead this type of pre-arrival task.

Clearly, most university students will use Facebook and othe social media to find peers in their accommodation and on their course. Is there anything that the course team can do to make the pre-arrival networking better?


5.1 - Enhancing pre-arrival activities including social networking


We recommend that:

• Programme teams design course inductions to maximise the opportunities to form friendship groups and peer support networks. Instead of endless successions of induction lectures from various programme and professional staff, inductions ought to include:

• Icebreakers

• Integrated small group projects (preferrably tied into pre-arrival tasks)

• Group seminars

• These activities ought, wherever possible, to have an academic focus. Students are likely to be suspicious of a purely 'social' activity and view it as optional.

Students' early priorities are often about learning, forming friendships and support networks. Do induction programmes help or hinder this?


5.2 - Enhancing programme induction

"When you feel lost and bewildered, the last thing you want is long lectures" (Edward, 2001)










We recommend that:

• Small group projects can be valuable for students to develop friends and support networks on their course. Early tasks ought to include activities that explicitly encourage networking, for example a questionnaire about one another to be completed at the first team meeting or an instruction to meet somewhere social like a cafe.

• In our study, field trips appeared to be particularly effective at creating a sense of community and many students reported them to be a

transformative experience. We are aware that there are risks with field trips, for example the motivation of those students who don't attend, but feel that course teams ought to try and find ways of using field trips early in the first term.

Group work can be a major source of stress for students. However, our evidence is also that group work has really helped social integration in our test programmes. Field trips appear to have been particularly beneficial.


5.3 - Extending the use of groupwork (particularly field trips)


We recommend that:

• Student to student peer support takes broadly two forms:

- Buddying - a less formal process where students work to help new students settle in by helping with induction (for example campus tours) or at informal meetings, via email etc

- Supplemental Instruction - is also known as SI, PAL or PASS. This is more formal, student mentors organise workshops that include study

support, ice breakers and structured revision sessions.

• Where could your team use peer support?

Peer support offered by students in the second and final year can help new students to adapt to life at university and offer a source of support outside the tutor/student power relationship.


5.4 - Considering the use of peer support (Buddies & Supplemental Instruction (SI))

"I've never been so homesick as I was that weekend...but what it did do was to really pull [together] our friendships ... because we were feeling a bit out of our depth ... then when you came back you really felt that you knew people." (BU student interview)

"In a PAL session, we had to say our names, where we are from and something unique about ourselves. I found that everyone let their guards down, so we could start getting to know each other." (BU student transition survey response)











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Recommendation 5 - Social integration


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Recommendation 6 - Improve the sense of belonging to the programme

We recommend that:

Course teams build a sense of belonging within the cohort through:

• Focussing on community-building during the pre-arrival period immediately prior to the start of the academic year

• Focussing on community-building during the induction: ice breakers, small group integrated research tasks

• Use of tutorials to help students develop a sense of belonging

• Use of group work, particularly fieldwork, during the early stages of the year

• Using buddies and peer mentors to create social learning activities

• Celebrating student achievements and successes

• Considering icebreakers or re-integration activities after Christmas

At the heart of the 'What Works? Student Retention & Success model', is a notion of belonging. Our evidence shows that good relationships with peers is a crucial part of the retention & engagement matrix.


6.1 - Developing good relationships with peers


We recommend that:

• Programme teams work hard to ensure that students feel that they are 'known' as individuals, students reported that it was important that they were known by their name and tutors knew a little about them. This is clearly a challenge on large programmes, but ought to be treated as a priority.

• Staff communicate clearly their expectations to students and explain how students can make contact with them. They also ought to show to

the whole cohort that it is possible to do so, for example by citing (anonymous) examples of issues that students have raised and how they have responded to it.

Students' early priorities are often about learning forming friendships and support networks. Do induction programmes help or hinder this?


6.2 Developing a good working relationship with tutors

As students became known by teaching staff, this "... intimacy led to a sense of 'belonging' in the institution..."(Yorke & Thomas (2003)










We recommend that:

A sense of the whole course community is promoted to students. Activities could include:

• Creating a sense across the year group. Could opportunities such as competitions and awards be used to create a broader sense of community?

• Creating a community across the years. This might be done by mentoring and buddying or social events organised by course reps.

• Course conferences - invite first year students to attend final year poster presentations or exhibitions.

• Links with alumni - a few stories or examples of life after university may help students feel part of a much larger community.

For many students, the most important community they will be members of at university will be the course community. This will be the place where they gain the most social support and often the strongest friendships.


6.3 - Developing a sense of community within the programme


We recommend that:

Programme teams find out about participation opportunities within the wider university community and encourage students to participate in them either individually, or as part of a course group. These might include:

• Varsity sports events

• Volunteering or RAG

• Social events such as balls

• Clubs & societies: Students' Unions often have (re)fresher events for students who missed out joining up during the original freshers' fairs

• Encouraging students to set up a course society

If you are ever in a management position, ensuring that social and informal learning space is included as part of campus and accommodation redevelopment strategies.

This toolkit is primarily concerned with the issues of retention and engagement within the course; however, there may be important connections that the course team can help students to make with the wider university community.


6.4 Developing a sense of belonging to the wider university community

"I think HE can overestimate the opportunities students have to feel a sense of belonging. Not everyone wants to join the football team"(NTU lecturer)













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Recommendation 7 - Foster motivation & help students understand how the programme helps with future goals

We recommend that:

• During induction, the course team encourages students to reflect upon why they are at university and what they want to achieve. If students are unclear, then it may help if the course team introduces students to some of the achievements of their predecessors.

• One effective ice-breaker used during our research was a 'wall of success' where students wrote out what they considered success to be at university.

• The course team celebrates students' successes and achievements and promotes them within the course community. This is likely to include the achievements of alumni.

• Involve alumni in aspects of the course, for example a talk during induction, or involvement in case studies, or offering feedback on presentations.

Motivation is largely an internal factor, the students have to do it for themselves. However, it is important that the course team makes it clear to students how the programme can help students become their 'future selves'.


7.1 - Supporting students to find their own internal motivation


We recommend that:

• Students are encouraged to see how the learning and teaching activities within the course can relate to their future goals. Without wishing to just turn the course into a form of preparation for employment, there are benefits from stressing how being good at teamwork or communication are also valuable employment skills.

• Course staff involve students in their research activities so that students can gain a greater understanding of what life in academia might be like.

Students appear to want reassurance that the course will help them achieve their future goals. How can the course team offer reassurance that the course will help them achieve them?


7.2 - Connecting students to possible external motivators

"The lecturers are very good and all have lots of experience in industry. The assignments are relvant to tasks you would typically see in the work place." (BU student interiew)










We recommend that:

• Students have the opportunity to participate in work related activities, placements, work experience or real field work.

- In our programme interviews, one team explained that they offered a day of field work during the induction week to give students an early feel for what they might be doing with their future career.

• Students are encouraged to participate in activities

outside the course that relate to a possible future career. If courses encourage self reflection as part of developing learning skills, then reflecting on these opportunities can be integrated.

• Opportunities for course related work are promoted to students.

Where possible, students are given the opportunity to try out work-related activities associated with graduate employment.


7.3 - Providing opportunities to sample work-related experiences












Recommendation 8 - Encourage students' active engagement with the curriculum

We recommend that:

• Course teams agree how they are going to engage students from the start. How are you going to help them move from being highly dependent learners when they first arrive to becoming fully independent?

• Using small group projects from the beginning of the year with lots of opportunities for feedback.

• Students engage with field work, practical

experiments and research from the start of their course.

• Courses use interactive, student centred approaches to learning

• Teaching staff encourage and model the value of discussion, asking questions and engagement.

• As a team you ask yourselves 'How do we make teaching first years rewarding and interesting?'

Independent learning can mean a rich opportunity to engage in debate with peers and try out new approaches. Or it could mean desperately avoiding the eye of the tutor in the seminar room. We argue that actively engaging students in learning is crucial.


8.1 - Using active learning approaches throughout the first year


We recommend that:

• Course teams provide research projects that have applications to real life issues.

• These may be actual projects, simulations, or support work for more senior researchers.

Many students reported that they were motivated when they could see how their studies were useful in the real world.


8.2 - Providing a range of rich learning experiences during the first year

"Every year, we have lots of our students being involved with the National Trust, working with the RSPB doing practical conservation work that's related to research work that we're doing here so I think they can see how it all joins up" (BU staff interview)










We recommend that:

• Course teams review how and when students receive feedback and how they are encouraged to engage with it.

• Students have at least one opportunity to learn from a formative piece of feedback, ideally early enough that they can then learn from it in time for other assessments.

• Students are told how and when assessment works and encouraged to think how they will make use of summative feedback.

• Learning from feedback is built into the course, perhaps through personal tutorials.

• Course teams consider possible 'meta-assessment' activities where students are encouraged to reflect and action plan based on feedback from more than just one assessment.

If students didn't understand how they were doing, they were more likely to be doubters. Students need to not only receive feedback promptly, but be supported how to learn from it and seek out support to learn from it.


8.3 Using formative assessment in the first year












Recommendation 9 - Ensure that there is good communication about, and access to, student support

We recommend that:

• Members of the programme team periodically remind themselves of the support facilities available for both academic and pastoral support.

• Staff understand how to and where to refer students for further support

• Where possible, further support is integrated. For example in one of our case studies, a study support specialist was integrated into the induction

programme and also co-taught on some first year modules.

Universities have excellent support systems, but like any large organisation, it can be difficult to keep up to date with all the different elements.


9.1 - Ensuring that programme teams know how to refer students to professional and specialist support


We recommend that:

• Services available are promoted to students early in the first term.

• Students are reminded of support by the course team at key 'at risk' times. The HERE Project found that one of these key times was either side of the Christmas break.

• One partner institution has an unoffical student handbook that they felt was more accessible for

students.

• Information from programmes about student support services is tailored to the needs of the students, not just offered generically. For example, part-time students felt that there was lots of information in course documentation that had been written for full time peers and this made reading support literature unnecessarily complex.

In our studies, professional services were only mentioned by a small number of students. However, those who had used them rated the experience very highly. It is important that accessing further support is made as easy as possible.


9.2 - Raising student awareness of the services available

"We download [the Student Support Directory] send it to the programme team and point it out to staff so they are aware ... it is important for us not to think we can solve everything. It is good to know there is support out there."(NTU programme staff)













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