Student Engagement and Retention.

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Student Engagement and Retention.

• Sue Pulko
• Reader in Numerical Simulation
• Department of Engineering
• University of Hull

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Year 1 Attrition versus A-level points
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First year attrition versus SSR
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First year attrition versus contact hours
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Other causes of poor progression

• Pastoral issues and financial difficulties
• Study skills
• Assessment difficulties and lack of feedback
• Poor attendance

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Possible solutions to the maths problem.

• Establishing the real needs of the students
• Teaching maths in-house.
• Maths drop-in facilities
• Increased maths tuition with extra staf support.
• Streaming

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Pastoral Issues

• Financial problems and the need to work
• Parental opposition
• Parental pressure to succeed
• Adapting to a new culture
• Opposition of spouse/partner

• Divorce
• Pregnancy
• Pregnancy of another
• Childcare

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Pastoral Strategies

• Same person as academic/personal tutor
• Real support for pastoral staff at institutional
  level
• Initial and ongoing training

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Active responses by departments
Figure 5. Frequency of active response to minority pastoral care issues Figure 5. Frequency of active response to minority pastoral care issues
Issue Reporting Frequency
Mature student issues 55
Disabled student issues 33
Gender related issues 17
Ethnicity related issues 40
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Study Skills

• Nationally, 10 students found it useful, 40
  said it was useless.
• Done it before
• Its not relevant to engineers
• Young men have difficulty in taking advice from
  authority figures
• Teaching approach

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Some Reasons For Assessment

• To give feedback to students (student think this
  is very important)
• To develop students self awareness
• To give feedback to teachers on quality and
  quantity of learning
• To monitor standards over time

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Feedback on Exam Performance

• Ultimate feedback would be return of fully marked
  scripts. (Some of us might not be ready for
  this!)
• Formative test mid semester?

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Feedback on Assignments

• Needs to be
• Sufficiently full
• Timely
• This is difficult for us as workloads increase.
  But, poor feedback (or poor engagement with
  feedback) means that students continue to lack
  basic skills and are repeatedly penalised for
  this failure.

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Other Issues

• Plagiarism
• Late submission
• These need to be dealt with consistently from the
  start.

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Poor attendance- if they dont come, how can we
teach them?

• Tracking
• Chasing
• Rewarding or penalising
• Counselling
• Attendance issues have much in common with
  coursework nonsubmission and lateness.

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Making sure they stay low!
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