Nick Tawn

Scalable Support for Engaging and Retaining New Students

Many factors have led to a decline in positive student engagement, particularly post pandemic. Attendance at lectures and attainment levels were down while there has been a concurrent increase in wellbeing cases. Students seem to be arriving at university with a less mature mindset towards their studies than the pre-pandemic era. We strive to develop students into domain experts who are responsible, accountable, and ultimately employable.

With the support and co-operation of our students we have developed an effective package of support that has seen valuable improvements in student retention, wellbeing, NSS scores and lecture attendance. A trio of initiatives I introduced form the backbone of this support package: a large and comprehensive peer mentor scheme; a dynamic academic support platform;  and a Careers inspiration series. I will also touch on our findings from our recent work in deploying lecture capture in a more effective way to promote more positive study behaviours with the technology.

This talk will give a broad overview of how we have scaled up and formalised support in the face of large student numbers.