Retention

Why does a student continue on or return to a university and/or degree of study? Universities are increasingly more aware of student completion, retention, and drop-out rates. Retention strategies are meant to assist students who are struggling with being successful within higher education. These strategies are most commonly found in first year programmes, but they can be implemented at any stage of a student's HE experience.

What are retention issues?

Institutions examine non-continuance rates or retention. This data is gathered by HESA and refers to students who have completed a year of study and who have not left before 1st December of a year. Many students leaving after this deadline will therefore not be counted giving an inaccurate description of those leaving higher education.

Retention strategies therefore are very important for both students and institutions. It is a huge investment on the part of the student to enter higher education. If a student chooses to leave due to either personal or academic reasons, both the university and the student loose out. Additionally there needs to be consideration to those students who are technically successful but just barely so. If something were to happen in the student's life this can quickly change. Programmes designed to provide assistance to these borderline students are becoming more common place among departments and institutions especially as student numbers continue to increase across the UK. The average dropout rate for UK students is 22% demonstrating a large loss to both parties.

Factors to consider for implementing retention programmes:

• Will it be targeted at every student within a course of study or group? Will it be provided to those deemed as in need?
• What sort of training will the person delivering the programme receive?
• How large should identified groups be?
• What type of system will it be: tutorial, social only, peer mentoring, face-to-face meeting or virtual in nature?

Successful retention programmes:

• rely on very dedicated teaching and support staff at all levels
• are unique to the institution and/or programme of study

What can institutions or departments do to help students with retention?

Examples of retention strategies/activities include:

A Practical Guide Bringing Together e-learning and Student Retention describes work funded by the HEA at Middlesex University.

Transition to HE: the impact of perceptions of students and staff at the University of Wolverhampton report shared the results of the student perceptions of entering undergraduate programmes in the School of Computing and Information Technology

A Preliminary Study of PASS Intervention, Sue Robbins, School of Life Sciences, Oxford Brookes University, and Personal & Academic Support: Supporting first year students within an academic School through proactive Personal Tutoring

THE SHOCK ABSORBER – A National Teaching Fellowship Scheme (NTFS) project to support and retain the first year learner - is a collaborative venture between Manchester Metropolitan University, the University of Liverpool and Stockport College to produce a flexible and adaptable toolkit for interconnected learning, teaching and assessment interventions for First Year undergraduate students.

How can the Centre for Bioscience support you?

Centre Events

E-Learning: Developments in the Biosciences 2007 event highlighted the Personal response (clicker) systems and learning that was used with first year students.

Bioscience Representatives' Forum 2006, University of Loughborough, where Dai Hounsell, ETL (Enhancing Teaching-Learning Environments) project and the University of Edinburgh, shared ‘First-Year students;' Jon Scott, University of Leicester, talked about the ‘Experiences of Learning and Teaching in the Biosciences and Student failure in the first year: An interview based investigation;’ and Roy Nichols talked about his transition from school to university as a student at the University of Reading.

The Bioscience First Year: putting research into practice 2004 event addressed ways to support students during the first year.

Bioscience Representative’s Forum 2003, Janet Pearce shares her analysis of absenteeism in first-year biology students. Peter Mitchell discusses his approach to making the transition to final year BSc Honours in Applied Bioscience at the University of Ulster.

Centre Resources

Induction Audit Tool from the STAR Project can be used to evaluate good practice and areas of change that might need to be addressed.

Examine the topics of induction and transition through additional Centre web based materials.

Centre Publications

Bioscience Education e-Journal

Computer-Assisted and Peer Assessment: A Combined Approach to Assessing First Year Laboratory Practical Classes for Large Numbers of Students, 2008, vol 11

The Quantitative Effect of Students Using Podcasts in a First Year Undergraduate Exercise Physiology Module, 2007, vol 10

Why am I Here? Student Choice in the Biosciences, 2006, vol 7

Students’ Perceptions of Skills Acquisition in the Undergraduate Bioscience Curriculum, 2005, vol 6

Realising e-Learning matters in a Bioscience Cohort, 2007, vol 10

Short Communication Student Failure in First Year Modules in the Biosciences: An Interview Based Investigation, 2007, vol 10

Introduction and Evaluation of Peer-assisted Learning in First-Year Undergraduate Bioscience, 2005, vol 6

Other publications

2007 Science Learning and Teaching Conference Proceedings: Exploration, experience and evaluation: Peer Assisted Study Scheme (PASS), sharing the experience of The University of Manchester: 480 1st year bioscience students.

Centre Funded Projects

Improving levels of literacy in science undergraduates, will assess undergraduates in their ability to write, and will use small-group teaching to give students intensive practice in writing at the beginning of their course.

An analysis of student absenteeism in first year biology students, examines why students fail to attend lectures and practicals during their first year. Includes project report and related information.

Combining 'Peer' and 'Online' assessment methods for large-class laboratory practicals to enhance the effective feedback to and learning experience for students, deals with ways to effectively deliver feedback to large first year classes.

Centre Surveys

National Student Profiles - Two student profiles address the HEA's Student Learning Experience in the Disciplines of Biochemistry and Microbiology

What other retention resources are available?

We have collected additional retention resources from across the Higher Education Academy, Subject Centres and other external organizations which might be of interest to you.

We hope the material included in these web pages is of use and we are open to suggestions of new material for retention.