Supporting students positive withdrawal

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Supporting students positive withdrawal

• Katrina Castle, Edinburgh Napier University
• - k.castle_at_napier.ac.uk
• Jonathan Staal, Abertay University
• - j.staal_at_abertay.ac.uk

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Two student bodies

• Edinburgh Napier
• Student population UG 12,008 TPG 2,294 RPG
  170.
• Age on entry 16-20 31 21-24 34 25 35.
• Gender balance Female 55 Male 45.
• Discipline mix Business 35 Creative
  Industries 9 Computing 7 Engineering 11
  Science 8 Social Science 4 Nursing 19
  Customised Programme 7.
• Fees status 70 home 12 EU 18 overseas.
• Disability No disability 93 Dyslexia 4
  Other 3.
• Abertay
• Student population UG 3,327 TPG 366 RPG 90.
• Age on entry 16-20 60 21-24 21 25 19.
• Gender balance Female 51 Male 49.
• Discipline mix Business 23 Computing 25
  Science 17 Social Science 30 Nursing 5.
• Fees status 82 home 15 EU 3 overseas.
• Disability No disability 93 Dyslexia 3
  Other 4.

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Two Student Bodies(data from UG 2007/08 cohort)
Student Status
4
Two Student Bodies(data from UG 2007/08 cohort)
Student Gender
Student Age
5
Discipline Mix
6
Two Student Bodies(data from UG 2007/08 cohort)
Fee Status
Disclosed Disability
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Common reasons for withdrawal

• General
• Funding.
• Relationships.
• Health.
• Homesickness.
• Isolated / lonely.
• Change of plans.
• Poor results.
• Study load.
• Supervision problems.
• Wrong course.
• Other reasons.
• (UNE 2006).

• Edinburgh Napier
• Career change (38).
• Course not as expected (35).
• Family / personal issue (17).
• Academic failure (14).
• Health (14).
• Study Skills (13).
• Funding (9).
• Abertay
• Academic failure (36).
• Personal issues - various (11).
• Left with an intermediate award (7).
• Non-attendance (7).
• Unsuited to course (4).
• Health reasons (4).
• Funding (4).

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Existing Support for Students Considering
Withdrawal

• Abertay
• Module / programme tutors.
• Personal tutors.
• Student Services, including academic support
  advice.
• Portal-based guidance to suspension / withdrawal
  procedures.

• Edinburgh Napier
• Programme Management Teams.
• Personal Development Tutors.
• Faculty based Academic Support Advisers.
• Student Affairs based Student Advisers.
• What am I doing here? leaflets.

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Supporting students to consider withdrawal as a
positive step forward

• Policy context
• Widening participation retention and progression
  rates poorest among students from
  low-participation neighbourhoods (SFC 2005).
• Social circumstances students with the greatest
  external constraints and the least choice of
  what, where and how they study are more likely to
  withdraw from their course (SFC 2007).
• Lifelong learning students able to identify
  positive aspects of their withdrawal from
  university felt
• In control of their situation when taking a well
  thought-through decision to leave their course.
• Better able to arrive at clearer ideas of their
  short to medium-term future.
• Better prepared to return to higher education in
  the future (Quinn et al 2005).

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University of New England Dont drop out.
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Scotland Dont drop out a model?
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A generic web resource to support student
withdrawal

• Rationale
• Enough similarities between institutions to
  compensate differences to make collaboration
  possible.
• Shortfall in adequate provision.
• Benefits of a support website being not specific
  to / associated with a single institution,
  especially as the institution might be part
  (/all) of the problem.
• Efficient pooling of resources.

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How might we develop such a website together?

• Creative Commons in Education licence so no
  individual institutional claim to IP.
• Generic core for each institution to adapt and
  host locally or single, stand-alone comprehensive
  entity, with its own branding or as part of a
  larger resource, e.g. Jorum.
• How could students become part of the site as
  well as passive / semi-active users, e.g.
  user-generated content and/or wiki-format?
• Could some partners institutions contribute
  content and others serve as critical friends to
  review development?
• What about medium to long-term maintenance and
  growth to sustain the initiative?
• Wheres the money coming from?

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Break-out group discussion questions

• What diversity issues would a website supporting
  students considering withdrawing from their
  course need to address?
• How to support critical self-reflection without
  risking reinforcing negative patterns of thought
  / behaviour?
• How to avoid a deficit approach that blames the
  student (different to supporting them to
  acknowledge an appropriate share of
  responsibility)?
• How do we make this attractive to those who just
  disappear?
• Should we aim to produce a stand-alone site that
  any institution could link to from their own
  pages or a generic core of materials that
  institutions could then tailor and embed in their
  own pages?
• How best to tie in with each institutions
  support systems (each with their own titles and
  terminology)?
• How best to tie in meaningfully with local,
  regional and national sources of external
  support, e.g. Breathing Space, CABx, Shelter?
• Might your institution be interested in taking
  the idea forward and, if so, who would be best to
  contact?

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References

• Quinn, J., Thomas, L., Slack, K., Casey, L.
  Thexton, W. and Noble, J. 2005. From life
  crisis to lifelong learning rethinking working
  class drop-out from university. UK Joseph
  Rowntree Foundation.
• Scottish Funding Council. 2007. Choosing to
  learn, learning to choose. Scotland SFC.
• Scottish Funding Council. 2005. Learning for
  all the report of the SFEFC/SHEFC widening
  participation review group. Scotland SFC.
• UNE. 2006. Dont drop out. online.
  University of New England. Available from
  http//www.une.edu.ac/dontdropout/reasons/index.ph
  p Accessed 20 May 2008.