Retention in Open and Distance Education - Andre BIederbeck

Editor's Notes

1. Why was the scope of the task force retention and student services? Because research and our own day-to-day experiences shows that study progress and preventing dropouts is quite challenging in online distance education. Therefore, the task assigned by the EADTU board was to analyse the challenges and collect examples of good practices on how to increase retention at our universities, which are located throughout the whole of Europe as you can see at the bottom of this slide. Our work has finally resulted in a report on retention and student services being published today. In the next couple of minutes I’ll give you some brief insights into the report. I hope my short presentation will be an appetiser – a taste of things to come.
2. Our first task was to collect and analyse research and to add our own professional experiences in order to identify the strengths and obstacles in ODL in terms of study progress and retention. Of course we had to define dropout (which isn‘t such an easy task as you might imagine) and you‘ll get to know on the next slide which definition we agreed on. Secondly, we collected approaches from the different universities and compared them and reached out to other experts at our universities in order to get as much information as possible. All this was done to support the development of strategies to improve study progress and to offer more agile student services.
3. As indicated, we came to a mutual definition of dropout as you can see here: “We can widely define…“ Deviant = Abweichler
4. The factors for drop out are varied and sometimes they differ greatly as research emphasizes. Among them are personal and external factors (blue) and on the other side personal and university related factors, which are in green colour here. For instance, coping with workload is a common factor, often because students have wrong expectations about the time they have to spend for studying in ODL. Others don‘t want to obtain a full degree. And moreover you have to keep in mind, our students are usually different to those in traditional HEI in terms of age, employment, socio-economic status, family and so on. However, it‘s not always the student to blame. Many reasons for struggling and finally drop-out could be reduced if we as universities would offer our students even more flexibility, especially in terms of examination and the size of modules. Furthermore, motivation and self-regulation as well as interaction is crucial for study progress which is quite a challenge as most of the distance teaching universities have high student numbers with few academic staff at the same time. So what can be done to increase retention?
5. We have identified two main approaches which can be described briefly as Curriculum Design and Learning Analytics. As mentioned before, a significant number of students do not pursue the goal of a degree for a variety of reasons. For them, certificates can offer a suitable alternative as these studies still provide them with proof of a qualification at university level. Furthermore, such certificate programmes are a more manageable entry into academic education and a motivating intermediate degree. They also offer students who have difficulties or are unable to meet the demands of their studies a qualification upon leaving university (as the experiences at FeU show).  Offering smaller modules with less than 10 ECTS can also help to make (learning) successes visible more quickly – because small modules take less time – they are also able to increase student motivation as research emphasises. The use of data and appropriate analytics can provide insight into how and where agile student services should focus their staff and students’ energies to gain the greatest impact on success. For instance, at OUUK the Strategic Analytics team began to share data insight about student performance relating to continuation of study and qualification completion rates.  This insight showed the correlation between certain stages of the student journey and the fact that the largest impact can be achieved when priorities are focused on the first module studied and specifically on supporting students between registration to successful submission of their first assignment.  To foster the effect of such an initiative, faculties and support units should build a community of practice including all the staff contributing to the first semester experience. In addition to these two general approaches, we came across many more measures which we summarised in the main chapter of the report.
6. For the main chapter we use the student life cycle to describe the stages where students dropout. However, they are also the stages where we can intervene with specific measures to increase retention. As mentioned before, we collected good practices from our universities and with the report we make them accessible to you and the general public. Due to the limited time for this presentation, we can only dive into the first two of them. Nonetheless, I hope this brief insight and the prospect of learning more about the approaches at our universities will encourage you to read the full report as soon as possible. So, let‘s continue with Awareness/ aspiration and expectation management.
7. So let‘s continue with Awareness/ Aspiration and expectation management. It is greatly important to draw a realistic picture and to address specific targets groups in specific ways considering their special interests, needs, prior knowledge and availability. With specific marketing campaigns we aim to encourage underrepresented groups, such as women in STEM,, people with migrant background and refugees. In order to convey a realistic impression of studying at a distance and open university, open courses or learning materials are offered providing a detailed and representative insight into the learning model and level of instruction. Prospective students are urged to use these OER not only to check if they have already gained enough prior knowledge and technical skills, but also to find out whether they can motivate and organise themselves adequately in an online learning setting. As all three of them – prior knowledge, self-motivation and self-organisation – are critical for retention (Elibol/Bozkurt 2023), they should be considered during the study orientation phase. Additionally, an increasing number of our universities offer online self-assessments. They give all prospective students the opportunity to check if their expectations and assumptions match with the requirements of distance learning in general and in terms of the subject they are interested in. Subject-based online self-assessments tend to focus on the subject-relevant interests and prerequisites and therefore support prospective students to find the degree programme fitting to their individual goals. In comparison, more general OSA are more about general attitudes to (distance) studying and they describe the level of flexibility, for example in terms of course and assessments dates. By receiving extensive feedback, the users get to know their own strengths and weaknesses better and they reflect on their career and learning goals. Secondly, they learn how they can further prepare for studying, for example by using one of the bridging programmes provided by the faculties, student counselling services or other departments. Afterwards they can of course get into contact with a student counsellor and clarify any open questions before making a decision for or against enrolment.   
8. Talking about preparation leads us to the second stage - Pre-entry guidance and preparation As students differ in terms of their prior knowledge, the non-compulsory preparation courses start at different levels. For example, at FernUniversität in Hagen the preliminary Mathematics course focuses on mathematical content of lower secondary school level, while the bridging course covers intervals, equations, inequalities and functions. However, Mathematics and Statistics are not the only subject addressed; data literacy, digital skills and English language proficiency are also covered as these competences are crucial for learning success today.     Furthermore, the preliminary and bridging courses are also tailored to students’ individual requirements in terms of their availability and use: the courses are self-paced and can be taken throughout the year, and prospective students can refresh previously acquired knowledge even before the decision to enrol is finally taken. As students generally only need to refresh or acquire some of the requisite knowledge, the courses have mostly a modular design.    While the bridging courses focus on subject-related skills, the orientation courses/modules provide more general study skills in order to lower the drop-out rate. In a compact format, they convey important information such as how to use the digital infrastructure, especially the learning management system, how to take a course, how to conduct literature searches and how to connect with fellow students. At some universities it is not only highly recommended that all freshmen take such induction courses; the students are automatically enrolled into them, although working through all the course materials is not compulsory. Considering the high percentage of students in full or part-time employment, time-management, learning techniques and self-management are amongst the key skills addressed using both research-based theories and tried and tested advice. Improving support regarding students’ post-graduation expectations (e.g. the labour market) has also been identified as a plus for retention, for it contributes to increased student satisfaction and motivation. This is why Career Services addresses students right from the beginning of their studies - also because professional reorientation can be a lengthy process that runs parallel to their studies.  Career Services of course are also connected to the stage – progression, but for now our journey through the report is over. (Thank you very much for your attention)
9. If you want to get access to the full report, please visit the eadtu website.
10. For a student to be able to fully engage, several factors play a role: PRE-CONDITIONS FOR ENGAGEMENT Emotional engagement, ability to engage motivated with a positive attitude to In my study, I also used this four-dimensional online engagement framework, which outlines the areas of online student engagement typically discussed in the literature: emotional, behavioural(family, other-> more flexibility, like microcredentials), social and collaborative (feeling part and accepted in the group. Support students to show respect, setting groundrules at start on how you want students to engage, sensitive in your moderation, culture to learn together) and cognitive (think critically, open for expressing your views, fear of making mistakes, censoring themselves instead of full engagement, provide safe spaces for active enquiry, constructive feedback, feeling safe).ENGAGEMENT fuels ENGAGEMENT also between the 4 dimensions. ‘Pedagogy of care”. My 4D framework is adapted from the Online Engagement Framework of Petrea Redmond et al (2018).I’ll now discuss my findings in relation to each of these dimensions.
11. Small group tutorials, not supposed to be lectures
12. Not participating ACTIVELY Six of the top seven reasons all concern a lack of confidence, while tutors believed it also had to do with technical issues Includes ‘Too nervous’, ‘Worried what other students might think’ , ‘Worried what the tutor might think’, ‘Not confident about knowledge of module materials’ and ’Behind in module studies’. Agreement between students and tutors on the significance of these in comparison to the other options.  Technical things aren’t the problem – but maybe an excuse
13. The course itself should be engaging. Will come back on the elements of engagement later. Most institutions use all three settings to some degree, depending on factors such as the profile of students and courses, the personal preference of the teaching staff, or the institutional culture. Open and distance universities primarily use an asynchronous online distance setting to provide accessible, flexible and scalable provisions for working students.
14. In addition to support by student services, the students’ on-course experience is critical for student retention in higher education distance learning. The psychological phenomena making up the experience – the emotions, wellbeing, and satisfaction levels related to the course – are closely associated with study motivation, critical for study engagement and retention. From a psychological perspective, an engaging on-course experience depends on satisfaction of four main psychological needs: 1. How confident and competent students feel, 2. how much students feel in control of their studying, 3. how safe and included the students feel themselves, 4. how significant the students feel the studying and the course topic So how should a Course be designed to support study engagement and satisfaction?  - A clearly structured course with an accessible visual design - Frequent testing with continuous feedback and assessment, motivates Use subtasks also as a tool for goal setting: achievable subgoals motivate students to learn. Use progress monitoring and allow self-monitoring to awaken an experience of competence in learners.  Positive feedback reinforces students’ strengths and allows students to feel themselves competent.   Allowing students to feel being in control over their studies supports the most effectively students’ intrinsic, autonomous learning motivation. The most inexperienced students may benefit from additional orienting studies early in the on-course study path. The more experienced students, who wish to advance quickly, can be offered one-off e-exams as a fast lane toward further studies.   A positive and engaging on-course experience includes a chance for interaction between students and instructors or chatbots. Interaction supports study motivation the most efficiently in the beginning of the course. For the more inexperienced students, providing social media platforms for informal learner-learner interaction in the beginning of the course is recommendable: Students help each other to learn the course contents, acquire academic skills, and even learn self-regulatory study strategies (e.g., Won et al., 2017). Worth considering is also providing completion methods supporting learner-learner interaction, such as presentations with peer feedback. These can be implemented in live, online – or, to maximize flexibility, even in asynchronous form.   Interestingly, learner-learner or learner-instructor interaction is not the most significant form of interaction for course satisfaction but the learner-content interaction, meaning students’ inner discussion with the course material and themselves (Kuo et al., 2014). Completion methods supporting an interactional approach toward the course material, such as interactional lecture videos, or other electronic course materials with testing of learning using quizzes. Using an interactional approach is an effective tool of guidance and supervision to help students focus on the most relevant contents in textbooks or other materials.