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What a difference a day makes: The positive outcomes of early face-to-face opportunities to establish a student identity in distance learning students new to higher education Moira Dunworth The Open University in Scotland, UK E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract Building on the success of a model of enhanced support for its access students, the Open University in Scotland offered a series of one-day events to ‘access’ students across Scotland in 2008–2009. This work and its outcomes are examined within the context of the literature on student identity as a factor in student retention, starting with Tinto (1975) and his seminal work on retention of first-year college students. The students who attended one event were considerably more likely to complete and to pass their course than comparable students. This article suggests that attending a face-to-face event helped these students to establish their identity as a university student and that this aspect of the provision may help to explain the better than average academic outcomes. These outcomes are congruent with the research in this field and they offer an element of challenge to the trend towards concentrating educational provision on online materials and computermediated student support. To avoid the human and resource costs of student ‘departure’ (Tinto, 1975; 1993), perhaps we need to revisit what we know about student identity and how it can be fostered at the early stages of a student’s career. Keywords student identity; distance learning; retention; student progression; student persistence; Open University

Journal of Adult and Continuing Education – Volume 18 No. 2 Autumn 2012 http://dx.doi.org/10.7227/JACE.18.2.2 © Manchester University Press

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Introduction Within the context of widening participation to higher education (HE), the Open University (OU) in Scotland has established a model of enhanced support through community-based organisations for students on access level (‘Openings’) courses – ‘Openings in the community’. This model has improved student completion and retention rates (Cannell and Hewitt, 2010) and a ‘Learning Events’ pilot project was undertaken in 2008–2009 to investigate the impact of applying some elements of that model to all access level OU students in Scotland. An evaluation of that project indicated that students’ motivation and commitment to further study had been boosted by their attendance at these events, always at just one event. This outcome is suggested by immediate and retrospective qualitative student comment and confirmed by higher than average completion, attainment and progression rates for participating students in comparison with figures for all OU Openings students in the UK (Hewitt, 2009). This article will outline the Openings in the community model and will report on the pilot project (Hewitt, 2009) which offered one face-to-face session to distance learning students in their first year of OU study. The results suggest that even one face-to-face connection with the university improved completion and retention rates in this group of students. This article offers the concept of student identity as one explanatory factor in the retention success of these events and the data are used to illustrate that connection and to suggest that the opportunity to establish their student identity was an important outcome for those students. It asserts this link between the beginnings of student identity as a factor in student engagement and ‘persistence’ (Karp et al, 2010–2011) and situates that within the literature on student identity and retention. This literature, which supports the assertion that establishing student identity is fundamental to retention and academic success in HE, is used to illustrate why such a small intervention might have led to such strong student outcomes.

Literature The literature on student retention includes some exploration of the process and impact of the formation of student identity. When student identity can be formed at an early stage in a student’s HE experience, it is a powerful indicator of retention and academic success (Harvey et al, 2006; Keenan, 2008; Tinto, 1993). Vincent Tinto worked in Chicago in the 1970s and initially examined the reasons for students leaving their courses in the first year in a residential university setting (Tinto, 1975). He asserted that social integration was a ‘rite of passage’ (van Gennep, 1960) process. Van Gennep’s stages of separation, transition and (re-)incorporation, to use a simple form of his model, can readily been seen to be relevant to the process through which young traditional university students might progress as they leave home and establish themselves as students in their new world (Scanlon et al, 2007). Tinto’s model of social integration also owes much to 4

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Durkheim’s (1951) identification of the importance, in society, of a subjective sense of belonging and membership and the opposite sense of ‘anomie’. ‘Anomie’ describes a state of alienation and disconnection from one’s social context and was linked to suicide by Durkheim. While Durkheim’s theory of suicide may be contested, his assertion of the importance of a sense of belonging had an influence on Tinto’s work. In turn, Tinto’s conclusion that when students fail to integrate into both the social and academic aspects of student life they are predisposed to dropping out is still a strong influence on contemporary theorising about student retention (Karp et al, 2010–2011; Scanlon et al, 2007; Urwin et al, 2010). For Tinto the first period of engagement with a college or university is vital to the retention of a student. He was clear that non-progression can always be linked to things that happened, or did not happen, in that first phase, which was an academic year in the context in which he was writing. He recommended that institutions focus on helping students to establish and engage with learning communities as this is essential to their participation in the educational process (Tinto, 1993). Tinto’s theory of student integration was initially developed on research carried out in traditional residential institutions and with young white men in the USA. In spite of these serious limitations in his early work, his ideas have informed the debate on student retention and progression across the HE and further education (FE) sectors. His later work (Tinto, 2003) considered a broader student context and found that learning communities supported student progress and persistence across a range of settings, including community colleges. His model of student integration has been applied directly to community colleges, quite a different socio-economic and academic group to that first studied by Tinto, by Karp et al (2010–2011) and Deil-Amen (2011), who argued that the social integration process for community college students was closely related to academic integration and was an important factor in student retention and progression. Community college students, arguably, have more in common with distance learning students than with traditional full-time students, making these applications and developments of Tinto’s work useful for considering the OU project that is the subject of this article. Like distance learning students, those at community colleges do not usually have the time or opportunity to engage in social activities alone and tend to approach academic activities, such as study groups or learning communities, as partly social events. It is here that relationships are established and support is accessed. Gibbs et al (2006–2007) asserted that Tinto’s social integration theory is not helpful or relevant to distance learning students but this article suggests that the concept of student identity formation, which owes much to Tinto’s work, is relevant and helpful in understanding students’ relationship to the university and to their student careers. Simpson (2004) argued that, because most student withdrawals happen early in the programme of study, intervention must be early to be effective and he concluded that proactive contact with students is considerably more effective than Journal of Adult and Continuing Education – Volume 18 No. 2 Autumn 2012

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reactive contact (responding to a student when a problem has been identified). In other work on identifying the most important features of student retention and academic success Harvey et al (2006) reviewed the literature and found the factors identified by Simpson (2004) to be important but also found that the factors which Tinto first raised in the late twentieth century were still highly relevant in the twenty-first century. A finding running through the literature they reviewed is that retention is only loosely connected with previous academic success but that many students withdraw in their first year if they do not feel that they belong, that they are a real student. New students adjust to the student role more quickly and easily if they learn the discourse which is expected of them and which helps them to fit into their new role. Scanlon et al’s (2007) work, building on van Gennep’s (1960) work as well as on Tinto’s (1993), explored the formation of student identity as a loss experience which occurs when students undertake the transition from their previous situation to university. They noted a connection between difficulties in navigating that transition and a lack of academic progress when those difficulties were serious. The feeling that one belongs as a student is not only important to full-time students; this factor also features in research about the experiences of part-time students (Yorke and Longden, 2008b). Picking up on this research, and working across the Bradford and Bournemouth Universities in the UK, Currant and Keenan (2009) looked at the induction processes for their new undergraduates. Their rationale for focusing on the induction part of the process of developing a student identity is helpful for our study; they noted that ‘at this point, everything is new and adjustments have to be made in terms of self-identity [my italics] and self-reliance’. They explored the effect of using early individual online preinduction learning resources with students and their findings suggest that their students felt supported by these connections and that these activities helped with their initial engagement with the university. Gibbs et al (2006–2007) also demonstrated that students felt encouraged by direct, and early, personal contact by a tutor and those students were more likely to complete their course and achieve better grades than students who were not contacted personally and proactively. Hughes (2010) considered identity and belonging in relation to students and concluded that it is knowledge-related identity congruence which is most important for learners, particularly in terms of gender and maturity; just like the new traditional undergraduates, any learner needs to feel that they fit into the student role. Applying the lessons from this literature to rural distance learners, it is clear that learning the expected discourse can be difficult to achieve at a distance, without any face-to-face contact, and Hughes’ work helped to explain why connecting face to face with other students seemed so important to students who did not have that learning community near at hand. Yorke and Longden’s (2007; 2008a; 2008b) work in the last two decades suggested that, among other factors, engagement with academic staff is important in student engagement and retention; Scanlon et al (2007) also identified 6

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interactions with lecturers as an important factor in the development of the student’s identity as a student. This chimes with the responses from our study in that students felt that they had met the ‘real’ OU in the person of the staff members there on the day. Student qualitative responses suggested that this link featured highly in their sense of congruence and in the developing sense of themselves as ‘real’ students. On entering university for the first time students, of any age, face a major transition in terms of identity as it is arguably a ‘rite of passage’ into studenthood. Distance learning, while opening educational doors to nontraditional learners, does not always offer assistance with the development of a student identity. All staff who work with them are familiar with the distance learning student who says that they are not a ‘real’ student. In part of this project we focused on rural distance learning students who face particular issues of selfidentity. Some students in rural areas do have the cultural capital necessary for that transition; their communities may include people and discourses which welcome the new student into their midst and provide opportunities for testing out new ways of thinking and speaking. To the rural distance learner, those communities can provide support, induction and identity confirmation similar to the friendship groups of undergraduates in a campus-based setting but not all students are lucky in this respect as rurally isolated communities may be less open to external ideas and identities than the more heterogeneous communities which can exist in urban areas. Anecdotally, this academic community support is more often lacking in the world of the new distance learner who is based in a rural setting, as urban-based students have a greater range of possible communities available to them. ‘Openings in the community’ model The project being reported in this article built on the Openings in the community model of enhanced support for Openings students through community-based organisations (Cannell and Hewitt, 2010). Within that model students are offered ‘taster’ and induction sessions in a face-to-face group which is based in the community and is led by a project worker from the university. This approach introduces students to their student role in a safe and supported way, creating a peer group of students at the same time. Support within and by the community is built into the model, thereby addressing some possible isolation problems which can arise because of gender, ethnicity or rurality. The number and frequency of group meetings varies according to the needs of the students and the agency resources. The links between the research on student identity and this model are easy to make as the community groups helped in the formation of student identity. However only students who could link into a community-based organisation were able to access this form of community-based support and so this learning events pilot project of offering one face-to-face session to all Openings students in Scotland was devised. Journal of Adult and Continuing Education – Volume 18 No. 2 Autumn 2012

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Learning events project Openings courses, other than those provided within models similar to that discussed above, offer no face-to-face contact; all tutorials are conducted by telephone on an individual basis. In order to assess the impact of cascading specific elements of the Openings in the community model to all Openings students, six face-to-face events offering learning skills and progression advice, including facilitated use of online resources, were held for Openings students across Scotland in 2008–2009 and that pilot project was evaluated. These learning events were often the first time a student had met a member of OU staff in person. Three of these events, to which all of the Openings students in one year (2008– 2009) were invited, were held in the Scottish cities of Inverness, Edinburgh and Glasgow and it is these events and their reported impact which are discussed in this article. The aims of the events were to introduce the OU as an institution, to offer study skills help and to facilitate participants to explore OU progression routes. The facilitators of the sessions within the events were Openings tutors, study advisors and other OU staff. A ‘student ambassador’ was also invited to share her experience of undertaking an OU course. The staff who participated in these events reported that it felt important to facilitate a sense of being part of a learning community through ‘putting a face’ to OU staff as well as to other students. It also felt important to those planning the events that the content of the session was student-led and so the students were invited beforehand to indicate the type of thing they wanted to see included in the sessions. The events offered a mix of group and individual contact. Within the workshop sessions the methods of delivery involved a mixture of didactic input, small group work and full group discussion. Following introductions and a short input on ‘being an OU student’, tutors experienced in providing generic academic support provided input on various study skills and on progression options within the OU. The participants engaged in exercises on skimming, scanning, note-taking and interpreting a short article before moving into a general discussion of areas of common concern. These workshops were participative and were adapted to meet the needs and wishes of the students present. Each started with a sharing of preferences for the use of that workshop time and the tutors drew on a range of resources to ensure that those expressed preferences were covered as far as possible. The sessions also included opportunities for individual students to consult members of OU staff about their study plans or any particular areas of concern which they did not wish to discuss in a group situation. An e-mail followed the invitation letter to remind students of the times and venues and to encourage participation. Venues were chosen with particular regard to the creation of a welcoming ambience and a mix of group and individual work was used throughout the events, as outlined above, in order to facilitate a shared dialogue. There was a low, but not unexpectedly low, response rate: 4% of those who had been invited attended each event. The students who took part in these 8

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three events were all at different points on their academic journey and were studying different Openings courses. The generic nature of the session had been communicated to the students in the welcome letter. As the computing component of HE study is continually developing, the students were shown how to get the most from the OU’s website areas which offered student support and information. The sessions included an input on progression routes through OU courses and qualifications and this often required access to a computer. As the Openings courses are an entry point to OU study it was felt important that the students had a flavour of how the broader university worked as an institution and what it offered. Methodology After the session, students were asked for feedback using evaluation forms designed to explore the difference which one face-to-face event might make in courses that only usually offer telephone contact. The immediate feedback indicated that the sessions had been well received. The student experience and the sustainability of their ‘feel-good’ reaction at the end of the event were measured by follow-up telephone interviews undertaken between three and six months later. The students who had attended the sessions in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Inverness were contacted and interviewed by telephone using a semi-structured interview schedule (Appendix 1). That schedule mirrored the questions on the event evaluation form which had been distributed at the events themselves. Of the 59 participating students, 44 (75%) were interviewed. The remaining 15 students were unable to be contacted within the timeframe of the enquiry and were mostly from the Glasgow and Edinburgh events, with fewer non-responses from the smaller city of Inverness. The interviews were conducted by the OU staff who had facilitated the events and, whilst there is an increased chance of bias when the interviewer is known to the interviewee, students appreciated the continuity gained when they were interviewed by someone they had already met and whom they remembered. Using the facilitators as interviewers also meant that the students could be reminded of the content of the session – some months having passed since it took place. The students were asked to recall the impact of the face-to-face event on their later learning and they seemed to find that easier when they remembered the voice of the interviewer. The aim of the interview was to collect qualitative evidence of the impact of those events from the students’ perspectives. It was hoped to discover what they had found useful at the time and what impact, if any, those sessions had on their studies. The questionnaire was devised and delivered by the same Openings tutors who had been involved in the learning events sessions. In order to standardise delivery the questionnaire included guidance to the interviewers. Much of the quantitative information needed for the evaluative report was available from the OU internal systems. This covered location of the student, previous educational qualifications, start date of their OU study and course Journal of Adult and Continuing Education – Volume 18 No. 2 Autumn 2012

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results and these data were logged prior to the interviews without having to ask extra questions of the student. Some of the questions were factual and easily codable, for example Q5 Prior to the event had you used the studenthome or any of the online resources? Calendar Study skills Forum Typically a closed yes/no question (‘Did you find it a useful event?’) preceded a follow-up question which was more open (‘In what way?’). Questions 2 and 9 are examples of such follow-up questions; they were open but were partly pre-coded in that the interviewer was provided with a list of codes to match the expected responses. For the other open-ended questions, or pairs of questions, the interviewers were instructed to enter the entire text of a response, or a summary where it was a long response – for example Q7 Have you planned to do further study? With the OU or other? Q8 Did attending the event influence your decision? All qualitative responses were retrospectively coded by the lead researchers. That coding was completed individually and then discussed between the interviewers and a compromise agreed. Findings The students who attended these learning events were not privileged or exceptional in any way. They had a very similar demographic pattern to other Openings students in Scotland in terms of the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation but slightly more of this group of students were unable to pay for their course fees and in terms of previous educational qualifications they might be viewed as slightly more vulnerable (Hewitt, 2009). Surprisingly, perhaps, given the focus of the events and the specific nature of the questions asked, study skills were not identified as the main benefit gained through having attended the sessions. All of the students said they had learned a lot from the study skills input and had successfully tried out the techniques that were introduced but this learning was reported as less important than the broader effect of gaining a sense of belonging. Students were invited to say what particular aspects of the events were the most useful. Table 1 depicts responses from students interviewed following the Glasgow event and this pattern of responses was typically replicated elsewhere. While no one choose ‘Study skills information’ from the list of areas of usefulness (Question 2), most selected one or more area of study skills from the 10

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What a difference a day makes Table 1 What aspect of the event was most useful? Meeting other students Meeting OU staff Exchanging ideas Time management Reassurance Essay writing Referencing Progression info

11 4 2 2 2 1 1 1

Note: most students reported more than one area of usefulness.

list – suggesting that the general concept of study skills was not one with which they were very familiar. Rather than selecting specific areas of study skills, the students tended to identify more generic and subjective outcomes of the events, including that of feeling part of the university. Meeting other students and meeting university staff appeared to be important as these outcomes cropped up in response to a number of the question areas and their importance seemed consistent across the events. In response to specific questions about the use of web-based resources and whether the sessions with the event had encouraged them to engage with the university through this medium, several students stated that they had begun to use web-based resources as a direct result of the event. They reported feeling more confident about this having been guided through the OU websites during the face-to-face sessions. When asked about the impact of the input on (study) progression, most students said that this element was important to their learning and several students said that they had left the session clearer about their ability to finish their current course and confident about the course on which they would register next. Some students said they now felt clear about their need to undertake an information technology course before moving on with their degree. Without exception the students were clear that they had gained skills and confidence from the content of the session although they did not rank specific skills as their most vividly remembered learning experience. Consistently the greatest impact expressed by interviewees, and their most vivid memory, was the way in which the face-to-face event made them feel ‘part of the university’. They enthused about having met other students and about their concerns having been alleviated through sharing common worries. As well as feeling a sense of belonging to the OU, the participants said that they felt a sense of knowing and trusting the tutors, whom they saw as ‘approachable’. I was most impressed by the way the tutors made success seem achievable. I was already considering withdrawing from the course I was doing at the time, but I went away determined to find other new ways to succeed (Edinburgh). Journal of Adult and Continuing Education – Volume 18 No. 2 Autumn 2012

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Several students interviewed said that they now felt able to contact their own tutor for the first time, having talked with OU staff in person. The different disciplines of the participants and the different stages of engagement with their coursework acted as incentives to think about different courses and to share strategies for successful study. I really felt inspired by seeing other students who were from different backgrounds, different ages and different stages of study, moving onwards and upwards through their learning (Edinburgh).

When interviewed it became clear that some students had travelled long distances to attend the sessions, at times in the face of financial hardship. The provision of a session in Inverness, a small city in a sparsely populated rural area, was particularly appreciated by the respondents in that it offered personal contact for students who were often isolated from peers. The element in that session of local tutors working with full-time staff from the university seemed to have contributed to the sense of a learning community for the students. I came along hoping to map out my OU career and maybe think about what I could do with the courses in terms of work opportunities. I do realise that this maybe was a wee bit ambitious because there were a lot of people there. The tutors did make it clear that advice on any of these things was available but living up here, face-to-face advice is really precious (Inverness).

Not only were motivation and enthusiasm maintained following the face-to-face sessions, attainment was also sustained at a high level. Of the 15 students interviewed who had participated in the Glasgow event, 12 (80%) were still either actively studying with the OU or preparing to start a new OU course. Similarly 11 (79%) of the 14 students interviewed after the Edinburgh session were carrying on with OU studies. One student was taking a break so as to bring his computer skills up to a more comfortable level before taking on his next OU course, one student recognised her need for community-based literacy support and one realised that her circumstances were not conducive to study at that time. In the case of the Inverness interviews all but two of the students (87%) planned to continue their study with the OU. The two who had decided not to register for another course said that they would return to OU study in the future. All of the students had come away feeling positive about themselves, their learning journey and their future study plans; one student captured the views of others with the comment that the session had created a feeling of belonging to a real university … Living far out means that study can be lonely and the workshop was a shot in the arm. I came away desperate to get into my coursework and think about what I would do next (Inverness).

As illustrated in Table 2, of those students who had attended one of either the city or rural events, 95% completed their current course and 74% passed. This stands in contrast to the 59% of Scottish students who completed their Openings course and the 53% who passed their Openings course in 2007–2008. 12

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What a difference a day makes Table 2 Outcomes of project students in terms of attainment and progression relative to other cohorts of similar students

Course registrations

Total

Completed

Passed

Progressed to other OU study

Openings events (2008/9) Openings students invited but did not attend All Openings students, Scotland (2007/8) All Openings students, Scotland (2006/7) All Openings students, Scotland (2005/6) All Openings students, Scotland (2004/5)

66 1,385

95% 60%

74% 55%

61% unavailable

1,379

59%

53%

unavailable

–

–

–

28.2%

–

–

–

37.5%

–

–

–

38.1%

Discussion Analysis of the completion (finishing the course) and success (passing the course) rates of attendees at all six of these face-to-face events (Table 2) suggests that student attendance at just one face-to-face event acted as a catalyst for high motivation, a sense of being part of a learning community, confidence regarding progression routes and high levels of achievement. That the completion and success rates of these groups were so much higher than comparable cohorts suggests that there might be one or more elements of attending these events which was important enough to make an appreciable difference to the trajectory of the learning journeys of those students. This article suggests that these particular elements are related to the formation of a student identity. Considering the findings reported above in the light of the literature on student identity, the responses suggest that these events enabled many of the attendees to begin or continue their transition (Scanlon et al, 2007) to seeing themselves as students. The respondents side-stepped questions about the practical and skillbased outcomes of the events and reported, instead, on the ‘sense of belonging’ they acquired. That discourse is resonant of Durkheim (1951), Tinto (1975; 1993; 2003) and later authors who have continued to build on the concepts of belonging, integration and student identity in explaining student retention or ‘departure’. Online and telephone support can allow for a strong learning relationship between student and tutor. However the impact of the face-to-face events as identified from the data produced by telephone interviews indicates that something special happened which affected the higher levels of retention and success evident in Table 2. It would seem that just one face-to-face interaction lays the foundation for future confidence and strong student identity. That interaction seemed to offer sufficient ‘social integration’ (Tinto, 1975; 1993; 2003) and Journal of Adult and Continuing Education – Volume 18 No. 2 Autumn 2012

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enough engagement with academic staff (Yorke and Longden, 2007; 2008a; 2008b) to make a difference: ‘I was already considering withdrawing from the course I was doing at the time, but I went away determined to find other new ways to succeed.’ Those elements seemed to have provided these particular students with adequate support for them to begin to create their own student identity (Currant and Keenan, 2009; Hughes, 2010). Feeling that they belonged to the university community may have helped the students to overcome some of the challenges which they, as distance learning students, face in abundance. Community college students have more in common with distance learning students than do traditional undergraduates, who formed the research base for Tinto’s early work (1975). Scanlon et al (2007) and Deil-Amen (2011) reported a similar connection between a sense of belongingness and retention in community colleges in the USA where the students are often older and have family and/or work commitments alongside their student lives. These applications of Tinto’s social integration theory are a helpful stepping stone for this article’s suggestion that the face-to-face connection with the university helped students at these events to establish their student identity and it is that sense of identity which influenced the retention and progression rates for those groups of students. The provision of any face-to-face events is assumed to be an expensive option in the current move towards more and more online teaching and student support but if it can improve completion and retention it may be cost effective. While the results of this project evaluation are very positive, caution is urged in relation to interpretation of the data. The students who attended the events were a selfselecting group and, arguably, already more motivated and connected than those, the majority, who did not accept the invitation. The attendance rate in Glasgow and Edinburgh was 4% of those invited; it was a little higher in Inverness, consistent with a tradition of greater engagement in face-to-face sessions offered in more rural areas. The staff to student ratio (Table 3) was high, as was considered necessary for this kind of event but constituted quite a resource-heavy intervention for a small minority of students. In the light of current concerns about the resource implications of dropout trends, this small research project is relevant to the wider research conclusions that universities must address a growing concern about the resource implications of losing students in the first year. What is surprising from this small-scale study is Table 3 Staffing resources and student numbers attending the three Openings city events

Students Staffing

14

Glasgow

Edinburgh

Inverness

21 3

21 4 1 student ambassador

17 2

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that such a ‘light touch’ intervention can have an apparently dramatic effect on student retention. The literature on social integration and student identity helps to explain why this might have happened. The contact with staff and other students at these events, along with the opportunity to engage in academic work, albeit input and practice on study skills, seems to have helped these students to self-identify as students and as part of the wider academic community. That sense of student identity may be the pivotal factor in the higher than average retention and progression figures for those students who attended these events. The emphasis here has been on the content and outcomes of events held in three city venues. The project also included three sessions based in rural towns in Scotland so that these students could also be given the opportunity to meet OU staff, ask questions and be given guidance on learning skills. In Oban, Dumfries and Stranraer all OU students in the area were invited to ‘drop-in’ days which included optional structured sessions on study skills and progression. Whilst the numbers of students attending these were low, a number of Openings students attended and the events also attracted non-OU student enquirers interested in future learning. Feedback was collected about these ‘rural’ events via evaluation sheets on the day, supplemented by informal interviews and discussion with the students at the end of the sessions. The comments received mirrored the data collected from the three urban sessions that had been provided specifically for Openings students. The same points were made and the students identified the same sense of belonging and connection. It is both reassuring and concerning that these issues have been exercising academic colleagues for many decades. Student ‘departure’, especially in the early stages of their study programme, is a costly loss to any university; considerable resources are involved in attracting students and supporting them in their induction stage of engaging with the university and their student role. Attention is being paid to ways in which this induction can include support for the formation of student identity (Currant and Keenan, 2009; Hughes, 2010). Some of that work uses web-based tools, with Currant and Keenan reporting success with such tools. They found that students gained a sense of belonging to the university at pre-entry stage through the use of an online forum and materials. The use of web tools to provide early and proactive contact and to support the development of a student identity would, undoubtedly, be more cost effective than the provision of face-toface events as discussed in this article. However, Simpson’s work (Simpson, 2004) on the importance of identifying vulnerable students and providing proactive contact with them might be used to target those students with whom more oneto-one and personal contact might be necessary in order to achieve that sense of belonging that seems to be so important in student retention. Conclusion This article has reported on the evaluation of a pilot project to offer one face-toface session to distance learning university access students in Scotland at an early Journal of Adult and Continuing Education – Volume 18 No. 2 Autumn 2012

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stage in their academic careers. Three learning events were evaluated and the academic results of the students who attended were compared with those of other students on the same courses in Scotland. The results of that evaluation indicate that attendance at the events may have had a strong influence on the academic success and ‘persistence’ of those students who attended. Building on the literature on student identity and retention, it is suggested that the face-to-face interaction with university staff and with other students at these events supported the students to establish their own learner identities and their sense of belonging to the institution. It is suggested that the success of the events is related to that student identity formation process being facilitated and supported by face-to-face interaction with university staff and other students. The students interviewed reported that they felt more confident about contacting their own tutor and about using the university’s web-based support materials. The most striking theme to emerge from the data is that of the realisation that university is for ‘the likes of me’ and this is strongly linked with the students’ motivation to continue with their courses and to progress their studies. The literature, from Tinto in 1975 through to the most recent research, confirms that retention is affected, among other things, by whether a student feels they belong in that academic environment. This article identifies student identity as an important aspect of that sense of belonging and situates the outcomes of this project evaluation within the research about student identity, which can be charted from Tinto’s work about student dropout rates in the 1970s (Tinto, 1975) up to very recent work about student identity (DeilAmen, 2011; Hughes, 2010). While this has been a small project, its message is clear – students value direct contact with their academic community. It is hoped that further research can test whether the high cost of providing that contact in a face-to-face situation can be justified in terms of the dividends of improved student retention and progression. Acknowledgements This article is based on work initiated and commissioned by Dr Lindsay Hewitt of the Open University in Scotland and the author would like to acknowledge the support and work of the Learning Development Team which led to this article. In particular Margaret Macdonald’s valuable contribution to previous drafts of this article must be recognised. Finally the helpful comments of the reviewers were appreciated and enabled the article to be developed to its present form. References Cannell, P. and Hewitt, L. (2010) ‘Reflecting on the evolution of Openings initiatives in Scotland’, Widening Participation and Lifelong Learning, vol 12 (special issue) pp. 130–137. 16

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What a difference a day makes Currant, B. and Keenan, C. (2009) ‘Evaluating systematic transition to higher education’, BeJLT (Brookes e-Journal of Learning and Teaching), vol 2(4), available online at http://bejlt.brookes.ac.uk/article/evaluating_systematic_transition_to_higher_education (accessed 12 December 2011). Deil-Amen, R. (2011) ‘Socio-academic integrative moments: Rethinking academic and social integration among two-year college students in career-related programs’, Journal of Higher Education, vol 82(1), pp. 54–91. Durkheim, E. (1951) Suicide (John A. Spaulding & George Simpson, trans), Glencoe, Illinois: Free Press. Gibbs, G., Regan, P. and Simpson, O. (2006–2007) ‘Improving student retention through evidence based proactive systems’, Journal of College Student Retention, vol 8(3), pp. 359–376. Harvey, L. and Drew, S. with Smith, M. (2006) The first-year experience: a review of literature for the Higher Education Academy, York: Centre for research and evaluation, Sheffield Hallam University. Hewitt, L. A. (2009) ‘Openings events pilot project (2008–09) – Report’, Edinburgh: The Open University in Scotland. Hughes, G. (2010) ‘Identity and belonging in social learning groups: The importance of distinguishing social, operational and knowledge-related identity congruence’, British Educational Research Journal, vol 36(1), pp. 47–63. Karp, M. M., Hughes, K. L. and O’Gara, L. (2010–2011) ‘An exploration of Tinto’s integration framework for community college students’, Journal of College Student Retention, vol 12(1), pp. 69–86. Keenan, C. (2008) ‘Students getting down to work before they start at university’, in G. Crosling, L. Thomas and M. Heagney (eds) Improving Student Retention in Higher Education: The Role of Learning and Teaching, Oxon: Routledge. Scanlon, L., Rowling, L. and Weber, S. (2007) ‘“You don’t have like an identity … you are just lost in a crowd”: Forming a student identity in the first-year transition to university’, Journal of Youth Studies, vol 10(2), pp. 223–241. Simpson, O. (2004) ‘The impact on retention of interventions to support distance learning students’, Open Learning: The Journal of Open, Distance and e-Learning, vol 19(1), pp. 79–95. Tinto, V. (1975) ‘Dropout from higher education: A theoretical synthesis of recent research’, Review of Educational Research, vol 45(1), pp. 89–125. Tinto, V. (1993) Leaving College: Rethinking the Causes and Cures of Student Attrition, 2nd edn, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Tinto, V. (2003) Learning Better Together: The impact of learning communities on student success, Higher education monograph series 2003-1, Higher Education Program, School of Education, Syracuse University. Urwin, S., Stanley, R., Jones, M., Gallagher, A., Wainwright, P. and Perkins, A. (2010) ‘Understanding student nurse attrition: Learning from the literature’, Nurse Education Today, vol 30(2) pp. 202–207. Van Gennep, A. (1960) The Rites of Passage, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Yorke, M. and Longden, B. (2007) ‘The first-year experience in higher education in the UK: Report on Phase 1 of a project funded by the Higher Education Academy’, available online at www.heacademy.ac.uk/assets/York/documents/ourwork/research/FYE/FirstYear ExperienceRevised.pdf (accessed 26 August 2010). Yorke, M. and Longden, B. (2008a) The First-year Experience of Higher Education in the UK, York: The Higher Education Academy. Journal of Adult and Continuing Education – Volume 18 No. 2 Autumn 2012

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Journal of Adult and Continuing Education Yorke, M. and Longden, B. (2008b) ‘The experiences of part-time students in higher education: A study from the UK’, York: The Higher Education Academy, available online at www.heacademy.ac.uk/assets/York/documents/ourwork/research/surveys/Part-time _student_experience_of_HE.pdf (accessed 24 September 2012).

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What a difference a day makes

Appendix 1

THE OPEN UNIVERSITY IN SCOTLAND Interview schedule for Openings students Various student details are already on the spreadsheet, including OU history

Phone interview Be clear when you first phone or leave a message that you are seeking feedback on the Study skills session on DATE in PLACE. Otherwise the student may think you are chasing them because of a cancelled course or missed TMA or ... Introduce yourself and remind them that they met you at the event. Remind them that it was in Glasgow in November of last year. Tell them it will take about 10 minutes.

Change date and place for other cohorts

Explain that we are following up all students at this event so as to find out more about how useful it was and what people are now doing. The feedback was very positive but we want to follow people up more individually. When coding answers you should interpret when appropriate in that you won’t expect the students to use the exact words of the ‘code’. There is space for ‘other’, of course. If there are any quotes that you think worth keeping (maybe for report purposes) please add at the end on the spreadsheet. Q1 Did you find it a useful event? Q2 In what way? Q3 In your OU experience of Openings did you find the following helpful?

Answers are pre-coded on the spreadsheet Ask about each aspect as pre-coded on the spreadsheet

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Q4 Which was the most helpful? Q5 Prior to the event had you used the studenthome or any of the online resources? Calendar Study skills Forum, etc Q6 Did the event encourage you to explore those further? Which ones? Q7 Have you planned to do further study? With the OU or other? Q8 Did attending the event influence your decision? Q9 If yes, How did it influence your decision?

Answers are pre-coded below

Q10 Any other comments?

Notes for recording answers: Q1 answers coded as yes/no/not sure Q2 answers coded as

Q9 answers coded as

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Meeting other students Exchange ideas Study skills info Essay writing Time management Referencing Note-taking TMA writing Progression info Meeting OU staff Having time to think about progression 12. Reassurance

Gave me confidence Inspiration from other students Inspiration from OU staff there I felt part of the community I got the information I needed Understanding about time requirements 7. Understanding about support available 8. Understanding more about how courses are structured

Where the spreadsheet says ‘text’ write in what the student says or a summary! 20

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