This project group aims to increase completion rates without lowering standards. A significant proportion of science and engineering students fail to successfully graduate. When a student is unable to graduate not only is valuable time and money wasted, but it damages their self-esteem and employability. In addition these results in the wasting of valuable university resources causing output-based systems to lose significant funding. This also affects professors who expend disproportional time and effort on 'failing' students. Finally, low retention potentially hurts recruitment.

1. Student Retention
Experiences of the ATTRACT project
Stockholm October 4, 2012

2. Student retention in the ATTRACT project
(1) Compilation of state-of-the-art knowledge, statistics and practices
in student retention based on literature review and country+university
reports. Outputs:
– Country reports
– Literature review
– What works in student retention? Exploratory study
– Comparative framework
– Glossary
(2) Implementation of field trials with the aim of
- Evaluating a method of monitoring student progression
- Developing and working with students’ questionnaires
- Finding good practices in student-teacher interaction, academic integration
and tutoring, and early identification of students at risk
(3) Analysis of findings and exchange of ideas and experiences,
formulation of recommendations
11.4.2012
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3. Contents
• What? Why? When? Where? Who? – The Five W’s
in Student Retention
• Results of the work done
– What works in student retention?
– Footprint
– Working with questionnaires
– Case studies: Good practices in tutoring, mentoring and
academic integration
• Economic aspects of retention
• Conclusions
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4. The five W’s
in student retention
• What? (phenomenon)
• Why? (factors contributing to staying or leaving)
• When? (times of dropout)
• Where? (different fields of education)
• Who? (different levels and actors)
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5. What?
(phenomenon)
Complex phenomenon, a great variety of concepts and measurement
practices
• Retention = ability of institutions to retain their students
• Persistence = desire and action of students to remain and complete
their degree
• Dropout = the act of leaving university prematurely
– temporary or permanent
– may occur at different levels (e.g. university, program, course).
• Opt-out
• Retention rate, survival rate, graduation rate, etc.
The process of retention is not the mirror image of the process of leaving;
knowing why our students leave is not equivalent to knowing why they stay
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6. Why?
(factors contributing to staying or leaving)
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7. Most common factors contributing to
dropout
• At early stages:
– Prior knowledge of the institution and program; (mis)match between
students’ expectations and their experiences
– How stimulating the students feel their teaching to be
– Poor academic performance
– Lack of social contacts
• At later stages:
– Students’ entrance into working life
• Predictors of good performance and progression:
– Good performance during the first year often correlates with good
performance at later stages
– Belief in one’s own capabilities
– Performance motivation
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8. When?
(times of dropout)
1. Point of entry: during and after the first year
2. Some later time – often near graduation
The first-year experience is critical because it is the time
when
– students are most vulnerable in terms of academic failure and
likely to experience social, emotional and financial problems
– important implications for students’ long-term engagement and
persistence are created
– most students develop their appropriate identity, become
socially integrated in the institution and attain their learning and
generic skills and qualities
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9. beginning of studies
University students’
careers in 12
European countries
(Kivinen and Nurmi 2011)
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10. Where?
(different fields of education)
• Many of variables work both in general and in engineering
education, although conditions may vary
• Dropout rates among engineering students are often higher
• Engineering education is considered uniquely different especially
during the first year
– a major in engineering tends to prepare a student for a specific career,
whereas majors in liberal arts or sciences are less focused on a career
– focus of the freshman engineering curriculum is often on developing
strong analytical skills and problem-solving using technology which
appears in demanding freshman math and science courses
– secondary education provides more “prep-courses” for majors in liberal
arts and sciences than in e.g. engineering
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11. Who?
(different levels and actors)
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12. Results of the actions taken by
WP8
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13. ATTRACT activities against the
theoretical framework
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14. What works in student retention?
• USA Instrument (ACT Company)
• Primary purpose of the tool: assess perceptions and specific
causes of attrition and factors that may affect retention
• Majority of selected factors were intrinsic factors that the
universities could not directly control; among 10 identified
factors only 4 could be regimented by the universities:
– Availability of academic advisors
– Quality of interaction between staff and students
– Level of job demands on students
– Quality of interaction between faculty and students
• Assessment not a common practice
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15. Retention Footprint:
Visualizing and monitoring student retention
in study programs across Europe
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16. Define indicators, show patterns
• Universities seldom produce data for retention,
graduation rate etc. in the same way
• Agreeing upon strict definitions takes time and may
block the progress, however concepts need to be
defined and made visible
• Focusing on figures may fade the patterns
– “A picture can say more than a thousand words (numbers)”
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17. Indicators for retention in the ATTRACT
project
Indicator Usability
• Number of active students, • Definitions differ but footprints
student cohort can be compared
• Credits after year one, year • Can be produced at all
three and nominal program universities except in one
length, median in the cohort
• Graduation from the initial • Can be produced but
program; graduation rate, comparability depends on the
mean value in the cohort definition of the cohort
• Graduation from any program • Measured in Sweden,
at the university; graduation estimated for rest of the
rate, mean value in the cohort countries
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18. Retention Footprint: Civil Engineering
ects credits year 1
median
1.00
0.90
0.80
0.70
0.60
0.50
graduation rate any 0.40 ects credits year 3 standard loader
0.30
program year 5+1 (bach level) median
0.20 Univ 3
0.10
0.00 Univ 2
Univ 4
Univ 1
graduation rate year ects credits year 5
5 +1 (master level) median
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19. Retention Footprint: Mechanical
Engineering
ects credits year 1
median
1.00
0.90
0.80
0.70
0.60
0.50
graduation rate any 0.40 ects credits year 3 standard loader
0.30
program year 5+1 (bach level) median
0.20 Univ 3
0.10
0.00 Univ 2
Univ 4
Univ 1
graduation rate year ects credits year 5
5 +1 (master level) median
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20. Footprint: Conclusions
• It is difficult to find directly comparable indicators due
to differences in educational systems etc.
• Data not directly available, however improved
systems in the future will help
• Comparing patterns and trends as graphical
visualization, instead of figures, fosters discussion
• Studying similarities and differences in the pattern
• Drawing actual conclusions, deeper analysis at
university level is crucial
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21. Working with questionnaires:
Feedback loop Transparent: if stakeholders are aware of
how their answers are used, they are
likely to provide the institution with the
information they need
1) Feedback
2) Feedforward = developing
practice by identifying critical
changes in student populations
BEFORE the situation reaches a
critical point
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22. Good practices in tutoring, mentoring and
academic integration
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23. Case studies
• Universities’ activities to increase students retention
can be divided into three major strands:
– Changes in the structure of studies
– Changes in progression rules
– Changes in human support – both academic and well-
being
• The case studies are a collection of actual practices
implemented in the partner institutions in order to
decrease non-completion rates among higher
education students.
– Focus on 1st and 2nd year activities
– Examples others can learn from
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24. Examples of good practices 1
• Study psychologist services – Aalto
– Study psychologists were first introduced in 2006
– Services for the students include individual counseling,
workshops for groups, lessons and material on learning skills
(preventive healthcare)
– Typical reasons for the students to seek counseling are
improvement in study skills (e.g. reading, writing, note
taking), time management skills, motivation, goal setting and
coping with stress
– The main purpose is not mental health care, however the
line between can sometimes be thin
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25. Examples of good practices 2
• Low Academic Outcome System (LAOS) – IST
– IST follows the Portuguese law related to the exclusion of
students with low academic outcomes; if a student has not
completed enough credits after a specific number of
enrollments, (s)he may be excluded from the university for
one academic year
– LAOS allows the identification of students with persistently
low academic outcomes who may be at risk of being
excluded from the university and is complemented by an
intervention plan aiming to reverse these outcomes
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26. Case studies:
Conclusions
• There seems to be plenty of similar activities (in terms of e.g.
tutoring) across universities but dissimilar execution
• Measuring (as much as possible) the impact of these activities
has proved to be a significant challeng.
• The generalizability of different activities is limited due to the
context dependency. Universities need to understand their own
contexts.
• One case study – Scholarly attitude to the retention practice –
represents the desired approach to these initiatives emphasizing
the importance of systematic evaluation
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27. Economics
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28. Economic actors in university education
Society
University
Intermediary
Admin- Faculty
Government istration
Department
Family Student
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29. Receiver Operating Characteric
1
0.9
0.8
0.7
Detection Rate
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1
False Alarm Rate
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30. Receiver Operating Characteric
1
0.9
0.8
More detection 0.7
Detection Rate
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1
False Alarm Rate
Larger Sample
More False Alarms
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31. ATTRACT Final Event 4.10.2012
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32. Summary
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33. Conclusions
Getting to know ones
context
Benchmarking and
learning from others’
actions
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34. In practice …
improved first year experience by integrating students into university
environment (through interaction with all university actors, inclusive teaching,
support and feedback)
+
monitoring of student results at key points in their academic life
+
early identification of individual and institutional challenges (through
feedback and feedforward system which helps to identify critical changes in
student population)
+
human support (especially for those experiencing difficulties)
+
improved structure of studies and progression rules to support meaningful
learning paths
=
most promising path to follow from here onwards
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35. Actions taken by partners
• First year experience, integration
• Interdisciplinary courses, programs
• Study skills courses
• Research
• Service
• Indicators, tools for analysis (footprint), improved
data handling
• Curriculum structure reform
• Collaboration projects
• …
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36. ATTRACT Retention reports will be
available at
http://attractproject.org
ATTRACT final report
+ ATTRACT WP8 Sub-reports:
– Selected country reports
– Student Retention Literature review
– Student Retention Comparative framework
– What works in student retention?
– Footprint report
– Glossary
– Knowing our students – workshop report
– Case studies on interaction, academic integration and tutoring
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