The team wanted to explore what made students stay or go. What personal messages did they remember? There was a student engagement programme in place and so they undertook a quantitative study with first year students at the end of the first year and now they had also undertaken this with first years from this year but after they had done five weeks of the course. 80 students had been involved.

They found the most memorable messages came from lecturers/tutors for both groups which 70% of students reported. 52% said that the second most memorable messages came from peers and others students.

The team wanted to find out what the most important message was about in the first semester and these were:

Assessment 32%

Learning and teaching 22%

Time management 10.5%

Attendance 6.8%

Student services 6.8%

Peers 4%

Fun/practicum 4%

Other 12%

What the team noticed was that none of this information led to students being inspired about their learning or motivated.

The assessment messages that were heard were mixed from lecturers so students were never clear, there was also messages about a pass gets your degree so what you put in is what you get.

The team’s next steps is to undertake focus groups to follow up these issues and to look at whether messages are changing. There was also a need to share this and explore how induction needs to explore motivating students from the beginning.