Maximising student persistence (ie retention)

Park, Caroline L. , Perry, Beth and Edwards, Margaret(2011) ‘Minimising attrition: strategies for assisting students who are at risk of withdrawal’, Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 48: 1, 37 — 47  http://pdfserve.informaworld.com/567221_751308121_934272875.pdf

This paper reports on strategies related to course design, course delivery and programme admin that could reduce attrition rates.

Glogowska, Young and Lockyer (2007) identified push and pull factors including decisions to leave a course

Pull

• determination
• commitment to chosen profession
• informal support
• formal support

Push

• challenge of academic work
• Burden of other demands
• financial strain
• lack of support
• negative early experiences
• illness/injury

Rovia (2003) also added that academic integration, social integration, goal commitment, institutional commitment and Learning Community are critical to retention.

While we cannot control or influence all of these, we can help with some and strategies to enhance persistence should be developed. Those suggested in the text are:

• Provision of academic and other support services
• Giving students a choice in learning activities that suit different learning styles
• Ensure social interaction – support from peers a keen motivator. Classmate encouragement is ranked higher than instructor encouragement. Integrate interactive learning activities, such as reflective questions to share knowledge and come to a mutual understanding or have collaborative learning activities to facilitate peer interaction.
• Formal Support – Mentors – students assigned mentors who stay in touch, build a relationship and may be able to help earlier when problems appear.
• Progress reports – help issued to students falling behind
• Regular student contact – intermittent messages to students to remind them that they are an important part of the programme and invite contact if they are having difficulties. The message must grab their attention, be relevant, enhance confidence and promote satisfaction. Isolation is a serious risk factor in retention.
• Orientation – familiarise students with policies, procedures, each other (informal networks), IT skills, study skills.
• Success Strategies course – study skills, workload planning, IT skills, writing workshops etc. In this example this course was mandatory and for credit.
• Letting students meet/join the community before they begin

I think I shall be using some of these in some proposals at work.

Back on WP now, had a break, time to think about social learning and my own CPD!

I’ve decided to start using the blog again to save notes from things I read/experience about elearning. At work we are developing a new DL programme which “should” be more interactive using online technology.

Just read  Purvis, Alison J. , Aspden, Liz J. , Bannister, Philip W. and Helm, Paul A.(2011) ‘Assessment strategies to support higher level learning in blended delivery’, Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 48: 1, 91 — 100  http://pdfserve.informaworld.com/791450_751308121_934325870.pdf

I found this paragraph particularly relevant:

Interaction is essential to students’ learning experience and achievement (Paloff & Pratt, 1999; Laurillard, 2000; Garrison & Anderson, 2003) regardless of the type of interaction (Jung, Choi, Lim, & Leem, 2002; McGugan, 2002). Students who participate in interactive elements of course delivery have shown increased satisfaction with their learning compared to students with limited interaction (Althaus, 1997). Research has also shown that learners learn more effectively if they are actively involved in the process rather than being passive thinkers (Webb, Jones, Barker, & van Schaik, 2004). However, interaction is only successful when it is a planned and integrated component of a course with a strong rationale for its use (Jung et al., 2002; Etzioni & Etzioni, 1999; Williams & Murphy, 2002).

This is what I need to get over to senior management and academics where I work. The DL programme is huge and provides a massive income to the University. I don’t believe that letting students to learn at a distance with no interaction is satisfactory. This is my battle!

learning behaviours are highly affected by assessment requirements (Gordon & Debus, 2002),  and a key consideration for any learning delivery is the use of assessment to enhance learning (Carless, 2007) rather than simply using it to measure learning (Taras, 2002).

Yes this is true, I’m guilty of it too. When pressures are on, or the topic or mode of learning isn’t grabbing me I do what’s required for assessment. I know most of the time I do the opposite – I do loads extra and do everything as asked, I understand why many DL students look at the assessment and respond accordingly. Time is very previous in the adult learner world,  most of our students work full time or more, have families and very senior roles. They need to be efficient and selective in how they spend their time.

It is perhaps to be expected that as students become more accustomed to collaboration throughout their learning experiences, the processes of collaborative working will become more accepted.

This is another battle I have, someone commented to me the other day that our students (who are an average age of 30-35) might not be ready elearning,  but there is evidence that it is getting easier.  I understand the resistance to ebooks over text books/online journal articles over printed papers, but this barrier should not be so difficult to overcome for social learning as long as the learning experience is designed to be interesting and relevant, bearing in mind those time pressures.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TMA4 Completed and onward to the ECA

Got TMA done and quite happy with it. I’m pretty sure it’s well proof read this time but to be honest I simply couldn’t read it again. This is the problem with proof reading.

I think I’ve learnt more about writing conclusions thanks to feedback on previous TMAs and feedback from Lesley in the tutor group forum so I hope I’ve done that better this time. Also from reading the many papers we’ve had to read in H800 I’ve learnt the benefits of reading conclusions is that you can get a good summary of the paper without having to read it all. Reading the intro and conclusion should give you enough about the main message and if you want to read the evidence behind it, then you read the middle bit. I hope my TMA has done that.

I focused on Learner Ownership with reference to Anderson’s interaction framework and Milner-Bolotin’s venn diagram showing 3 things that contribute to learner ownership. Learning activities should have personal value, give the learning a feeling of being in control and the ability to take responsibility.

We were asked whether or not we agreed with the statment ‘Learners have ownership of technology-enhanced learning.’. I did agree with this.

It was a mammoth TMA but now I feel ready to tackle the ECA.  We’ve got 5 weeks (or about that) to get it done and I feel on a roll, we have no other activities to do that are worth noting. I really want to get as much of it done this week as I can. I don’t want to be panicing this time in 4 weeks no knowing what I’m going to be writing.

TMA 3 was a planning exercise for the ECA so will revisit that and maybe even review the whole thing. TMA3 came at a time, for me, which was not good. I was quite stressed out about the whole course, work and life balance issues and did not have enough hours in the day and I was full of self doubt. I feel better now having made some changes to my routine which has helped and taking the pressure off myself a bit. I’m wondering whether the ECA will actually end up looking quite different to the first version of the plan.

VLE, ownership and interaction

I had an interesting discussion at work this morning,. I was explaining what I had been reading/writing in my course recently and we ended up talking about a group of students who are setting up a study group outside our VLE, although our VLE provides private areas for students with discussion forums, notice boards and a live classroom facility. My first reaction was, why?

My second reaction was why not? If students want to co-exist outside our VLE then fine; let them do what they like. The fear or “losing” students to the outside world is there – why do we insist on trying to increase interaction on our systems.

The VLE is like the Business School’s physical building, students only come there for teaching, to find people, ask questions and get information. Students do, however, use the building for social meetings/student only meetings but that’s because they have a comfortable student lounge and the availability of computer rooms and syndicate rooms. But distance learning students don’t need this do they – they’re at home/work or where ever and they don’t need a physical environment to work in.

This took me back to the essay I’m writing at the moment about the ownership  of  learning provided by technology for students and I just wanted to make a note about the issues of control. Control from the centre or control from the students. the VLE is control from the centre and students don’t feel they own this area, they are curtailed by it and want to use their own areas (like the Student Union or Library) for their support networks.

However, institutios  fear this loss of control – what do they think is going to happen? We’ve never been able to control where campus based students talk; so why should we think we can control where distance learning students talk. If anything, DL students should by their nature, be allowed more freedom to communicate where ever they like.

I’m really sold on the article read by Anderson, see further back in my blog and the three types of interaction – interaction between student and content, student and student , student and tutor.

Our programme is very much focused on student-content with some online interaction with peers and tutors as required and optional.

There is an mandatory f2f teaching week on the programme – 1 week for each 12 months of the course; this morning we referred to this as binge teaching. Like binge drinking. The students get 1.5 days on each module over an 8 day period, going straight from one module to the next, no time to reflect, consolidate, reinforce. The model is fine as long as the content reflects this notion.

Could we instead of having each subject separately, use the 8 days for consolidation and a holistic view of the modules rather than keeping them in their little silos.

Week 25 Activity 2 Interaction- student, teacher, content

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Read Anderson (2003) ‘Getting the mix right again: an updated and theoretical rationale for interaction’.

1              On page 2 of this article, Anderson (drawing on Sims, 1999) lists the functions of interaction… In what ways have you found that H800 incorporates each of these functions of interaction and through what means?

Learner control

Student-student and Student to peer: H800 lets the student decide if they want to interact with peers/tutors through forums, blogs, wikis, web-based conferencing and so on. There are some Marks available for forum contributions but only a small amount.  Student – content H800 is assessed by written assignments, which lets students decide which activities to focus more or less on; the lack of weekly “lectures” means students can interact with the content at their own pace. Material being withheld for each block, however, restricted learning control.

Facilitating programme adaptation based on learner input

Student – tutor: interaction with the tutor meant that the programme could be adapted during the module and for future iterations; interaction with the content gives students the opportunity to give this feedback. Interaction with others lets the feedback be supported or not. Learners could share additional resources outside the core programme via social bookmarking and forums and blogs.

Varied forms of participation and communication
H800 enabled you to participate more or less and in different ways using different technologies, and at different times of the course. Communication methods were varied. Participation with content was varied but mostly supported by the printed word. Activity tasks enabled communication with tutor and peers.

Aiding the development of meaningful learning
Interaction with at least the peers and the content made the learning more meaningful, you could not interact with peers if you had not interacted with the content.

Interaction is also ‘fundamental to the creation of learning communities’ (Anderson, 2003, p.2).

Without interaction with other people and knowledge about the subject, you could not have a community. Communities need a shared interest and things to say to each other and do together.

The value of another person’s perspective is key to learning in constructivist theories.
Learners needed to know that other people had useful things to contribute to their learning (peers and tutors). The tutor role comes with an automatic respect, but peers need to show the value they can add.  Putting your learning in the context of others through peer-peer interaction, and student-content interaction is important for your career as you won’t always be working in the same context.

2.            Based on your experience of H800, would you agree with the first claim in Anderson’s equivalency theorem?

‘Deep and meaningful formal learning is supported as long as one of the three forms of interaction (student–teacher; student–student; student–content) is at a high level. The other two may be offered at minimal levels, or even eliminated, without degrading the educational experience.’ (Anderson, 2003, p.4)

Why? Why not?

In terms of H800 the student-content interaction has always been high, the student-student has varied both by the activity, the timing and the choices made by individuals, and the student-tutor interaction has also been minimal and increased to high levels around the times of assessment. I believe I have still had a deep and meaningful and satisfying learning experience being able to dip into the peer and tutor interaction opportunities when required.

Could the student-tutor interaction have been eliminated- I feel connected to the institution by this role, I feel I have some interaction with the “lecturers” via this “teaching agent” someone on your side, there to keep you going but if you look at what the tutor role – it’s added to satisfaction levels, but has it added to learning?

Could you drop the student-student contact – for me no, but for others this is fine as they have studied the course with very little in fact no interaction with other students – well no explicit interaction that is. What about just lurking, is this interaction?

3.            Drawing on the points from Anderson outlined in question 2 above, and the other examples later in Anderson’s paper, make notes on the circumstances in which you would economise on student–teacher interaction and seek to increase the use of student–content interaction. For what purposes, using which tools? Is there a danger that this could, eventually, lead to an online “correspondence” course where the “teacher” is redundant?

You could be persuaded to drop student-teacher interaction in favour of student-content interaction where the numbers of students are large and where effective student-teacher interaction is unfeasible due to cost or availability of labour.  Using quizzes that give you feedback, for example, enable students to test themselves and get feedback with the tutor only having to create the quiz and feedback once rather than for each student. Short videos help teachers to deal with the problems they face with dealing with questions after lectures if, like at Warwick there are over 400 UG’s to deal with.  An Operations Management lecturer at WBS has created videos using screen-grabbing software and audio narration to help students answer these common questions which has solved the problems of their confusion and his lack of time to support them.

Our less elearning enthusiastic lecturers do feel that elearning will make the teacher redundant; but in our current distance learning model, there is only 1 day of teaching anyway and contracted tutors have the student support/feedback role and the “teaching” is all done by printed and online resources and some interactive content. I think there is a fear of the danger of making teachers redundant but in my own experiences on H800, I feel a sense of connectedness with the institution by having a tutor and involvement in the discussion forums by the course chair that I would not have if there the teacher-student interaction was eliminated.

4.            Anderson does not limit his account to distance education, and briefly discusses classroom delivery, audio and video conferencing and web-based courses. He also sets out an interaction-based model of online learning in figure 2 on page 9, based on the three major elements of student/learner, teacher and content.

• • To what extent does this model apply to your own practitioner context?

This relates to my experience supporting learning and as a learner, where learners choose which route to take – independent study or paced, collaborative learning. I have used a combination of these approaches on H800 alone. I like the pacing of the course calendar to keep me to schedule and also means that I get to collaborate with my peers at the same time in the forums. I also like the independence and flexibility afforded to me when I can choose to engage with the different forms of interaction and differing levels myself and be more independent. In the independent route I have taken advantage of all of the learning objects, but also my supporting actors (co-workers, peers and family support) when required.  As a practitioner, I see our learners doing the same thing, we have many students we do not “know” much about, they do not call for support, they do not interact with the support staff and do not use the tutor support or do any of the formative assessments – they still pass the course, but I would question how meaningful the experience has been for them. We have others who adopt every interaction opportunity possible with Tutors, each other and with content.

• Which of the four different forms of interactive learning is most appropriate for your context? Why?
• Paced, collaborative learning – this is useful for students who particularly like to learn with others and need the motivation of a study schedule to complete their work.
• Independent study – this is useful on the DLMBA programme , students can choose to pace their work how they fit and to dip in and out of as much of the interactivity with others/tutors as much or as little as they like.
• Structured learning resources – We have a variety of structured learning resources but probably not enough, and as Anderson points out, when we use web based conferencing tools the teachers are tending to use them in the lecture format and not exploiting their interactive elements enough but it is early days.
• Community of inquiry – students can set up their own online support groups and therefore, to an extent, create a community of inquiry that interacts both synchronously and asynchronously.

5.            Anderson implies that interaction often involves a trade off, in terms of cost, available technology and preferences of learners.

• How satisfactory would you judge the mixture of interaction in your own practice setting? And in H800?

The difficulty we face at WBS is a drive to cut costs and increase student numbers on the DL programme. It is unlikely that we’ll get extra staff for delivering synchronous s-t interaction in the near future so we need to find ways to substitute this with S-C interaction. S-S interaction is difficult due to the students being based all over the world (a minimum of 100 countries covered in any one cohort) all with different time zones and time commitments and study routines and schedules. The flexibility of our programme is one of its key selling points so to add more structure into the programme would be detrimental. However, we do believe that there may be a market for a DL programme delivered by a highly ranked and highly reputed business school like WBS that is structured and does have a high degree of S-S and S-T interaction. It may be true that there are enough students who want to commit the time to do this such as the Global MBA programme offered by IE University in Spain.

The mixture of interaction on the DLMBA programme is High S-C, low T-S, low to medium S-S depending on the student and choice of modules. The mixture on the IBM MBA programme is High S-C, Medium T-S and high S-S.

I fear that the teaching style of many of our lecturers means that lectures and online classes are in the lecture style described by Anderson and although they have CONTACT with the students, there is little interaction. I think we could substitute the S-T interaction which will be difficult to achieve high levels of with more S-S and S-C interaction, but not more print based C!

• What are the reasons for its strengths and weaknesses? And in H800?

Taking the functions of interactivity outlined on p2, the strengths of the current structure are that it gives students control over their learning experience and it allows choices participation/communication levels. However I question how the programme is adapted by learner feedback. We make administrative changes all the time, but content changes are rare. I also think that student choice in interaction levels is a problem as what happens when some students want lots of interaction, but hardly anyone is interacting with them and therefore their satisfaction levels decline.

More notes on the Anderson article follow:

Week 25 Interaction and Learning Support

Good resources are enough for most informal learning contexts, but in formal learning there are expectations of support to achieve learner goals.

Thorpe, 2002, defines learner support in terms of distance education as “all those elements able to respond to [learners]…before, during and after the learning process.”

3 types of interaction

• between learner and their peers;
• between learner and their tutor; and
• between learner and the course content (Moore, 1989).

Engagement between learners and an entity outside oneself is core to the learning process (Laurillard 1993).

In Distance Education, Learner Support services have been set up to respond to the needs of the learner groups.  Where learners meet their teachers in a traditional educational setting learner support is a conventional part of the teacher/student relationship. But in TEL, support needs do not sit within conventional working hours, time zones and students working in unsocial hours.  To maintain high retention rates we need to find ways to support learners flexibly during evenings, weekends and during the day.

Mediated forms of interaction and support

Technology provides an answer to the problems through forums, conferences and email – to initiate and respond to learners outside the “open hours”, however forums are being used in a labour intensive way (Anderson 2005) – reading and responding to messages takes too much time. An alternative proposed by Anderson is a combination of independent study with interaction using educational social software.

Related to my practice.

On the MBA at Warwick we provide support by administrative teams to replace the face to face support Mon-Fri working hours, tutors support this by monitoring the module based forums all the time (in their chosen working hours which can be evenings and weekends) and are sometimes international hours. By using asynchronous forums and email students can reach support teams and staff. WIMBA web-based conferencing is timed after normal UK working hours and at other times of day to meet the needs of different time-zones, and they are also recorded but this means that the students don’t get any interaction with people but with content only. The student website on the DLMBA programme provides students with 24/7 support in terms of handbook information and  a comprehensive FAQ which is always updated, video and textual instructional guides help students to use the services on the websites. Students are encouraged to use each other as resources via the forums and virtual study group features; this also enables interaction with tutors.

Using tutors to read and respond to forum postings is time consuming, and as a student on H800 I find this too. H800 has a particularly active forum due to the subject being studied so I would say it’s an anomaly but it is very difficult keeping up with it and having to read all messages to find one or two pieces of value. In my informal learning too, forums are very busy and very time consuming especially if you don’t check for a day.