What co-curricular interventions contribute to the academic success and retention of non-traditional commencing undergraduate students identified to be at risk of academic failure or early attrition from university when taking into account distal and proximal factors?

Abstract

The extent to which three specific co-curricular interventions contributed to the academic success and retention of non-traditional first year undergraduate business students who were identified as being at risk of academic failure or early attrition in their university studies, when taking into account relevant distal and proximal factors is evaluated in this thesis. Three specific co-curricular interventions introduced across the at-risk students’ first semester at university were tested individually and cumulatively to assess their impact on academic success and/or retention. These interventions were: (1) semi-structured consultations with Student Success Advisors (SSAs) which began before start of the semester, during which time the SSAs proactively contacted at-risk students to address their requirements and responsibilities, but also in an attempt to have students commit to a plan of follow-up sessions throughout that semester; (2) Academic Skills (AS) Sessions run from Week 4 of semester by Student Success Advisors (SSAs) and other university staff; and (3) ongoing Peer-Assisted Study Sessions (PASS), for numeracy-based courses, coordinated by later year students (who had previously excelled in the course), in addition to their regular tutorials. This thesis uses an Australian model, Lizzio’s Five Senses Model to ‘make sense’ of the experience of the encounter between students who are not just new to university, but often derive from backgrounds where they have no family university heritage to draw upon, in tackling university study and its often-foreign environment (a lack of academic and social capital). Universities up until most recent decades faced a largely homogenous student body. A case study approach was taken to this research, to determine the impact of the three co-curricular interventions when also taking into account distal and proximal factors. Part of this involved an examination of the validity of the Lizzio Model on two separate cohorts of students identified to be a possible risk of academic failure and attrition from their studies. Two separate cohorts of commencing domestic first year students with similar distal characteristics, (i.e. factors: traditionally ‘fixed’ to individual students and are part of their antecedents prior to entering higher education), for example, pre-entry individual characteristics such as tertiary entrance (TE) scores and family demographics, are examined within this thesis. These studies, for brevity referred to as Study 1 and Study 2, examine the relationships between early risk factors identified by the literature, the co-curricular interventions applied, and later consequences in terms of student retention, academic performance and satisfaction while also considering the impact of distal and proximal factors. The distal factors were used by the case-study University to deem these students at risk of academic failure and attrition. While a focus on proximal characteristics, (i.e. factors closer in time and place to the university encapsulate the way students behave and perform within the university setting), for example, their attendance and engagement at class, was used by the university to try to improve their academic success and retention rates. Using learning analytics before the commencement of semester, students were identified as being potentially at risk on entry to university using selected ‘primary risk filters’ based on student’s individual distal characteristics. This included the at-risk students having a combination of: a low TE score (in the OP11+ range); a low preference for studying business as a degree program (third preference or lower); low socio-economic status (LSES); and a language other than English (LOTE) spoken at home. To assess the effect of the co-curricular interventions, at-risk students were monitored using proximal ‘ongoing engagement’ indicators. These identified the number and percentage of at-risk students who attended at least one SSA Consultation, an AS Session and PASS. Academic success was defined in terms of whether a student passed courses in which they enrolled at the commencement of their first semester, as well as whether the student had a passing (i.e. > 4.0) grade point average (GPA). It was then re-tested at the end of the student’s following semester, to assess whether the student had a passing (i.e. > 4.0) GPA at the end of their first year of study and whether this corresponded with overall retention of these students. Retention was defined in terms of whether the student re-enrolled in second semester, and the first semester of the following year for each cohort. Additionally, graduation rates were reviewed up until the end of 2017 for both cohorts (2012 and 2014 commencing students). Because of the ‘originality’ of the SSA Program at the case-study University, and it being the center-point of its co-curricular initiatives, a strong focus of the research revolved around the use of learning advisors, known as Student Success Advisors (SSAs). The SSAs were specifically appointed to the Business School to help improve the academic success and retention rates of students considered to be at risk of failure and/or attrition. In Study 1, the quantitative analysis was undertaken to test whether attendance and participation in co-curricular activities had a statistically positive significant effect on academic success, in addition to the effect of distal and proximal variables, including five proximal lifecycle risk markers known to predict student engagement and retention (Wilson & Lizzio, 2011). The results of this study were then tested on a similar cohort of students (Study 2), for which a prospective model was formulated. For Study 2, thematic qualitative analysis was undertaken of extended semi-structured interviews with 25 at-risk students at the start of Semester 2, 2014 soon after the students had completed their first semester at university and involvement in the co-curricular interventions. The thematic qualitative analysis was used to gain a deeper understanding of the students’ first semester (first year) experience, and of their perceptions of the effectiveness of the interventions on their academic success and re-enrolment in second semester. Collectively these studies enable exploration of a much larger set of variables that are grounded in student success and retention, thus further enabling analysis of student characteristics and perceptions with subsequent retention and performance. The results suggest that the interventions such as the Student Success Advisor (SSA) Program are part of a range of resources that students can draw on to improve their success. Collectively, the studies show the value of the SSA and PASS interventions, however, both distal and proximal factors impact dissipate resulting in student failure and attrition over time if the students have not built their own senses of success. As such, the Five Senses Model maps against the student experience in terms of helping to predict outcomes by providing an education model to educate all parties about students working towards finding their own sense of connection, capacity, resourcefulness, purpose and student identity. Primarily, the results suggest that student sense of ‘mission’ (purpose) is most important on entering the university. The sense of purpose appears to be associated with FiF status, which is predictive of retention (but not GPA performance). The thesis does recommend an augmented model that synthesises the combined work of Lizzio (2006, 2009) Tinto (1975, 1993) and Kerby (2015), in addition to recommending the inclusion of a sense of support and a sense of (having personal) resources, to encompass proximal and distal factors. While there is no single panacea to cure attrition, the results of the case studies suggest that interventions such as those investigated within this thesis (i.e. the use of SSAs and programs such as PASS and AS Sessions), help students build their five senses of success, in addition to developing a sense of support and the sense of having personal resources. In particular, interventions developed as part of a first-year co-curriculum suite of activities, such as those fore-mentioned, are likely to help first-in-family students whose family background may not provide students the academic and social capital required to easily adjust to their new learning and social (university) environment. Evidence further suggests that if these students are given this support then they are able to graduate at the same rates or better, as their second-generation peers, as found within this thesis. This is of great importance to other institutions similar to the case-study university, where being the first-in-family to study in higher education is more common. Thus, the results of the case studies suggest that the interventions could indeed help universities improve their retention rates if implemented; albeit, the significant time and costs of such must be taken into account, and thus government policies and funding that support such activities are also strongly encouraged. This in turn should help universities achieve stated government objectives such as improved retention and graduation rates.