Increasing the chances of student successin the first year of full-time study

Mantz Yorke

mantzyorke@mantzyorke.plus.com

University of Leeds11 January 2006

The ‘impossible pentagon’

Five policy ‘desirables’

• Widened participation

• High completion rates

• Higher quality of HE provision

• Higher standards of student performance

• Lower cost

Neither award nor transfer, %

Year began 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002

UK all 16 16 16 16 15 14 14

England 16 16 16 16 15 14 14

Scotland 17 16 16 17 17 16 18

Wales 16 16 14 15 14 15 16

N. Ireland 13 11 13 11 12 12 15

Projected outcomes

HEFCE/HESA PIs

Non-continuation at same HEI, %

Year began 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002

UK all 13 12 13 12 12 12 12

England 13 12 13 12 11 12 12

Scotland 13 12 12 13 13 13 13

Wales 12 13 11 12 11 14 15

N. Ireland 9 9 15 10 10 12 12

HEFCE/HESA PIs

All FT first degree entrants

Leeds

10.6% of 6830 FT u/g entrants to Leeds are mature

19.6% of 5145 young FT first degree entrants are from NS-SEC classes 4-7, compared with the HESA location-adjusted benchmark of 24.1%

Data from HESA PIs

30

25

20

15

10

5

00 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45

% non-continuation English universities

% NS-SEC classes 4-7

HESA Performance Indicators

Russell Group Leeds

Pre-1992, not Russell

Post-1992

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

What are PIs for?

Judging institutions

• But is the methodology even-handed?

• What about PT students?

• Would a ‘per module success rate’ be fairer?

Encouraging institutions to improve provision

Informing the public

• directly

• indirectly, via ‘league tables’

International comparisons (OECD statistics)

What drives institutions?

Fear of poor retention/completion statistics?

Funding streams?

Desire to enhance students’ achievement?

To focus on retention is to focus on symptom rather than on cause

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)

Levels of action

• The system

• Institutions

• Organisational units

• Students

• Assist student decision-making

• Enhance the student experience(curriculum, pedagogy, other aspects)

• Promote student engagement

• Help students to cope with the demand…

• … and with failure

• Deal sympathetically with adventitious events

• Ask students about their experience of HE

What can institutions/schools do?

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

High-performing US institutions

• Focus on getting students engaged, especially in their first year

• Have a genuine emphasis on the quality of undergraduate teaching and learning

• Ensure that academics and administrators monitor student learning, taking advantage of the power of modern data systems, and use monitoring for helping individual students and for developing policy and practice

• Have leaders who make student success a top institutional priority – and stick with it Carey (2005)

• A culture of learning

• Programme structures likely to engender success

• Teaching approaches likely to engender success

• Assessment for learning

• Make the 1st year relatively resource-rich

• Usefulness of the ‘employability literature’?

(contrast Barnett & Coate, 2005, with ESECT re curriculum)

The student experience: academic

The virtue of small steps …

I found having large blocks of work without assessment difficult – you don’t know if you are grasping it or not until exam time! Assignments weekly would be better from my point of view. Female in her 30s, pursuing a science-based FD programme

The less individuals believe in themselves, the more they need explicit, proximal, and frequent feedback of progress that provides repeated affirmations of their growing capabilities.

Bandura (1997, p.217)

• ‘Get stuck in’ early

• Give early feedback on progress

• Find ways of giving reasonably regular feedback…

• … and of ensuring that students act on it

• ‘Active learning’

• Exploit the social side of learning

• Foster a sense of ‘belonging’

Teaching for engagement

Employability;broader personal effectiveness

Subjectunder-standing

Meta-cognition

Skilfulpracticesin context

Personalqualities, includingself-theoriesand efficacybeliefs

E

S

U M

USEM

Understanding of subject matter is a normal

expectation

Understanding of how individuals, organisations and

‘the world’ work may not be an expectation in some

(especially non-vocational) curricula

U Understanding

S Skilful practices in context

In the context of the subject discipline, and also in workplaces and more general life-situations

… the ability to leave your office and go and face people in the community, not knowing how those people will be in terms of their social situation, their mental health and also how they’re going to perceive you and deal with that social work jargon …

[It] only comes with practical experience […] you don’t need a social work qualification … to be able to think about how people function under stress, under difficult situations

Experienced social worker (Knight & Yorke 2004, p.61)

E Efficacy beliefs and personal qualities

• Importance of motivation to learn and achieve (but the desire to ‘perform’ may militate against successful learning)

• Capacity to learn from misfortune, error, criticism

• Belief in the ‘developability’ of intelligence, etc

• Belief that one can ‘make a difference’

• Importance of emotions in learning…

• … and in working with others

• Academic and practical intelligence success

M Metacognition

• Possession of general strategies for learning, thinking and problem-solving

• Capacity to differentiate between tasks, recognising that variation in difficulty is likely to require different cognitive strategies

• Awareness of how one tackles tasks and learns

• Self-regulation

Understanding and Skilful practices are important; so are Efficacy beliefs and Metacognition

Foci• Working on the student’s ‘self-system’ [E]

• Supporting the development of metacognition [M]

Approach• Emphasising formative assessment

Meta-analyses: effect sizes on learning

Effect size

Self-system (Marzano 1998) 0.74

Metacognition (Marzano 1998) 0.72

Formative assessment (Black & Wiliam 1998) 0.70

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

Black and Wiliam (1998, p.61)

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

Acquiescence Autonomy

Kohlberg 1964Perry 1970 (reprinted 1998)King and Kitchener 1994

Supportiveness

Students observed that feedback was given in such a way that they did not feel it was rejecting or discouraging . . .

[and] that feedback procedures assisted them in forming accurate perceptions of their abilities and establishing internal standards with which to evaluate their own work

Mentkowski and Associates (2000, p.82)

Weaknesses (Subject Review)

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’

Gibbs et al (2003) Conditions 1-4

Assessment tasks

• Indicate clear and high expectations

• Lead to productive activity

• Capture enough study time

• Are spread out evenly

Gibbs et al (2003) Conditions 7-11

Feedback

• Is sufficient (in frequency; detail)

• Is provided quickly enough to be useful

• Focuses on learning rather than on marks

• Is linked to assessment task specification

• Makes sense to students

• Is received by students and attended to

• Is acted upon, to improve work and/or learning

Intentions,goals,

commitments

Academicexperiences

Social experiences

Integration

Intentions,goals,

commitments

Departuredecision

Pre-entryattribute

s

Weak empirical support

Stronger empirical support

after Tinto (1997)

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

Some other 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

…

Problems with models

• Slippery concepts and terminology

• Multiple theories

• Varied foci of attention

• Linearity

• Rationality

• Predictiveness

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

There is no simple causality

Psy ofIndiv

Instit’lcontext

Adventitioushappenings

Broadersociety

We cannot guarantee student success, because students have to contribute their effort

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

if our approach to ‘the student experience’ isinformed by theory and empirical evidence.

Epilogue

Gibbs G, Simpson C & Macdonald R (2003) Improving student learning through changing assessment – a conceptual and practical framework. Paper given at the

EARLI Conference, Padova. At www.open.ac.uk/science/fdtl/documents/earli-2003.pdf

HESA Performance indicators 2003-04. At www.hesa.ac.uk/pi/home.htm

Knight PT and Yorke M (2003) Assessment, learning and employability. Maidenhead: SRHE and Open University Press.

Yorke M and Longden B (2004) Retention and student success in higher education. Maidenhead: SRHE and Open University Press.

The series Learning and Employability, published by the HE Academy, contains somerelevant material even though its focus is on employability. It can be found bysearching under ‘employability’ at www.heacademy.ac.uk/resources.asp. Unfortunately, the L&E items are not flagged as such.

Some references