(Well, one of them)I've felt for a long time that one of the hardest challenges in higher education is how do we make teaching first years interesting? How do we put our brightest and best academics in front of our freshers to inspire and motivate them. Surely our students are here to be wowed by …
Tag: Higher Education
Two Tribes: why a single version of the truth is dangerous when it comes to student retention
I'm increasingly convinced that one of the most important survival skills for working in higher education is being able to hold (at least) two mutually incompatible ideas in your head at the same time. I think the issue arises because we try and apply rules, principles and realities at an institutional level with thousands of …
The problem with wellbeing analytics (& what we need to do to fix it) (part 2 – metrics)
There's something potentially of real value in developing and using wellbeing analytics, but there are also some challenges that need careful consideration. If the first set is defining wellbeing, the second is ‘metrics’. In essence, what’s the meaning that we can ascribe to the masses of data that we’ve got? Most importantly, what’s the association …
A New Model of Student Engagement
There are loads of really good models describing student engagement in higher education. Essentially, all these models seek to explain how the interaction between the learner, their institution and broader society influences student success. Pascarella & Terenzini (2005) describe them as 'college impact models’. They’re all useful, all interesting, and inevitably, all inaccurate (to some …
The problem with wellbeing analytics (& what we need to do to fix it (part 1))
At the time of writing (Summer 2023), the UK higher education sector has implemented learning analytics fairly widely (albeit in fits and starts). We have been using ‘engagement’ or ‘student success’ analytics since the early 2010s. Truthfully, the technology has proven to be good at identifying students at risk of early departure, but finding ways …
Continue reading The problem with wellbeing analytics (& what we need to do to fix it (part 1))
The Philosophical Case for Attendance Policies
In the most recent blog, I’ve received comments criticising the notion of attendance monitoring from both a libertarian and a social justice perspective. I think that the libertarian argument is that students are rational agents capable of making their own choices and living with the consequences and I think that the social justice argument is …
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Student Attendance: explaining the post-Covid Crisis
Possibly the biggest question in the sector right now is “Where the heck are the students?”. Attendance in classes appears to be down across the HE sector leading to some understandably frustrated tweets (here & here) and students aren’t necessarily replacing face-to-face learning with online activity. Attendance always falls over the course of the academic …
Continue reading Student Attendance: explaining the post-Covid Crisis
Modelling how to ‘make students attend’
I'd argue that practically no students have perfect attendance. In the focus groups I wrote about in the last post, the students felt that they had good attendance, but it wasn't perfect. They didn't attend for a variety of reasons: because the sessions weren't perceived as interesting enough, they'd prioritising coursework, were ill etc. These …
A Typology of Student Engagement Activity
Students drop out from their courses for a variety of reasons. Early withdrawal is shaped by Socio-economic forces, students' personal goals/ mission for being at university, the lived experience of studying and sometimes just bad luck. We may not be able to precisely weight these factors, but they appear pretty consistently in studies. The sector …
Slides from my keynote for the Kompetansenettverk for Studenters Suksess I Høyere Utdanning – 7th December 2021
Largely through the hard work and enthusiasm of Harald Åge Sæthre I know that colleagues in Norwegian universities have invested considerable time thinking about the issues of helping students cope with the transition into the first year. One outcome of this work is the Kompetansenettverk for Studenters Suksess I Høyere Utdanning (competence network for students' …
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