What works? Student retention and success change programme (Phase 2: 2012-15)
Liz Thomas is leading the What works? Student retention and success change programme on behalf of the Higher Education Academy, and working with Action on Access and Professor Mantz Yorke to evaluate its impact and research the process change.
Between 2008-11 the Higher Education Council for England (HEFCE) and the Paul Hamlyn Foundation funded the What works? Student retention and success programme. This £1 million programme provided funding to seven teams to identify and evaluate effective approaches to improving student retention and success.
The Paul Hamlyn Foundation has provided additional funding to the Higher Education Academy (HEA) and Action on Access to develop, deliver and evaluate Phase 2: What works? Student retention and success change programme. This phase focuses on implementing change informed by the findings from the first phase in higher education institutions between 2012/13 and 2014/15, and evaluating the impact. The Programme aims specifically to:
• Use the learning from the What works? Student retention and success
programme, institutional data and institutional review to identify
strengths and challenges and priorities for change at the strategic and
course/programme level (2012-13).
• Improve the strategic approach to
improving the engagement, belonging, retention and success of students
(2012-13 onwards).
• Implement or enhance specific interventions in
the areas of induction, active learning, co-curricular activities in
three selected discipline areas (2013-14 onwards).
• Evaluate the
impact of the changes in both formative and summative ways, drawing on
naturally occurring institutional data, bespoke student surveys and
qualitative methods such as telephone or face-to-face interviews with
staff and students (On-going)
The Programme attracted interest
from a wide range of institutions and this is reflected in those
selected to participate. There are currently 13 institutions progressing
into the second year of the Programme. For further details see HEA site.
Find out more
Principles of effective practice
Reflective checklist: induction and transition
Reflective checklist:
active learning and assessment
Reflective checklist: personal
tutoring/academic advising
Reflective checklist:
peer mentoring
All discipline teams participating in this programme need to complete
a survey. It can be completed by the team leader, or collaboratively.
The survey can be downloaded here.
Please download the survey and
save it with the following file name Survey-institution-discipline, for
example survey-poppleton-sociology. Please email the completed survey as
an attachment to
research@lizthomasassociates.co.uk.
All surveys should be returned by 5 September.
The first Briefing is available here.
Keep
in touch by signing up to the retentionandsuccess JISCmail list.
There will be an end of programme conference in 2016
For further
details please contact
liz@lizthomasassociates.co.uk