RIDE2013 presentation: Is distance learning failing its students?
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Presentation from 'Enhancing the student experience' workshop at the CDE’s Research and Innovation in Distance Education and eLearning conference, held at Senate House London on 1 November 2013. Conducted by Ormond Simpson (HE consultant, Visiting CDE Fellow). Audio of the session and more details can be found at www.cde.london.ac.uk.
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RIDE2013 presentation: Is distance learning failing its students?
- 1. RIDE 2013 Student Motivation and Retention Ormond Simpson Adapted from „Student retention in distance education - are we failing our students?‟ – tbp Open Learning November 2013
- 2. 100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 82 Conventional institutions Distance institutions 61.5 39 15.7 22 14 5.3 2.5 0.5 6 Conventional and distance graduation rates compared 2
- 3. The „Distance Education Deficit‟ The „DED‟ 3
- 4. What happens to students who dropout? - effects of dropout on full-time students in the UK Probability of: dropouts Probability of suffering depression, unemployment and (women) partner violence, according to educational experience (Bynner, 2002) 4
- 5. Effects of dropout on distance institutions Students drop out of their first module Institution loses income – is unable to invest in better student support Students do not re-enrol Institution loses re-enrolment fees 5
- 6. Moore‟s „Theory of Transactional Distance‟ Professor Michael Moore The isolation of distance students (from other students, their tutors and the institution) is a principal factor in dropping out. 6
- 7. Proactive Contact “Student self-referral does not work as a mode of promoting persistence. „ “Students who need services the most refer themselves the least. “ Effective retention services Professor Edward Anderson 1942-2005 take the initiative in outreach and timely interventions with those students” 7 7
- 8. Importance of learning motivation “The best predictor of student retention is motivation. Retention services need to clarify and build on motivation and address motivation-reducing issues. “Most students dropout because of reduced motivation” (Anderson, San Diego, 2003) 8
- 9. „E-learning‟ ? - a „category error‟? Gilbert Ryle 1900-76 9
- 11. “No e-teacher can ever be certain that their teaching will cause a learner to e-learn” Professor Paul Ramsden - Ramsden (2003 - paraphrased) 11
- 12. Teaching „[Teaching] that does not consider motivation... may result in little improvement‟ Gibbs and Morgan BJET, (1982 - paraphrased) 12
- 13. “The important thing is not so much that every child should be taught, as that every child should be given the wish to learn.” - Lubbock (1834-1913) Do we spend too much time on teaching and not enough on motivating students to learn? 13
- 14. Student support needs to be…? Proactive Motivational Individual and Interactive „Proactive Motivational Support‟ („Appreciative Advising‟ or „Strengths Approach‟) 14
- 15. Learning motivation theories 2 John Keller – ARCS Theory Martin Seligman – ‘Positive Psychology’ Carole Dweck – ‘Self Theories’ John Hattie – „Self–Reporting‟ - and others 15
- 16. Cost benefits of retention If F = students fee per year, S = institutional expenditure per student, V = total institutional overhead then if the number of students in year 1 is N1 and in year 2 is N2 Income Year 1 = N1F – (N1S + V) Income Year 2 = N2F – (N2S + V) Reduction in income due to student dropout between years = N1F – (N1S + V) – [N2F – (N2S + V)] = (N1 – N2)(F – S) Then if there is a retention activity costing £P per student it will cost N1P. If that increases retention by n students so that N2 becomes N1 + n then the reduction in income is now: [N1 – (N2 + n)](F - S) So the reduction is itself reduced making a saving of (N1 – N2)(F – S) – {[N1 – (N2 + n)](F - S)} = n(F – S) For the retention activity to be self-supporting n(F – S) > N1P Or np > 100P/(F – S) where np is the per cent increase in retention For example P = £10 F = £2500, S = £1000 then np > 100x10/(2500-1000) = 0.67% So if a retention activity costing £10 per student produces an increase in retention of more than 0.67% it will be self-supporting 16
- 17. Funding learner support £ Fund motivational student support Generates increased student fee income from re-enrolments Increases student retention 17
- 18. Barriers to increasing retention “The biggest barrier to increasing retention - is the institution itself” - Johnston (Napier University 2002) Institutional attitudes 18
- 19. Attitudes to student retention 1 The „Darwinistas‟ Students drop out because they're not intelligent enough, unmotivated or lazy. “We‟re here to weed out the unfit” 19
- 20. Attitudes to student retention 2 The Fatalistas Students dropout for reasons beyond our control “Students are doomed to pass or fail and there‟s not much we can do about it” 20
- 21. Attitudes to student retention 3 The „Retentioneer‟ Students most often dropout because of lack of proactive support. “We should help students be as successful as they can be” 21
- 22. 22
- 24. 'Supporting Students for Success in Online and Distance Education' (2013) - now out with Routledge http://tinyurl.com/ supporting-students www.ormondsimpson.com 24
Hinweis der Redaktion
- 2. These are the graduation rates for a variety of distance education institutions (in red) compared with the graduation rates for more conventional UK higher education (in blue). This selection of distance education institutions is quite random – it’s just those institutions which have actually published their graduation rates. Most don’t and I think it’s probably obvious why – the rates hover around 10%. The latest distance fashion the MOOCS – seem to have a success rate on individual courses of around 6%. You’ll see that the distance version of LIP does somewhat better than most institutions but still only has a graduation rate of 15%. #
- 3. I think of this phenomenon as the ‘Distance Education Deficit’ or DED.There seems to be some complacency about this in distance education circles - you won’t find much mention of it in the conferences or journals - a recent issue of the OU’s own journal - ‘Open Learning’ - was meant to be on entirely on retention but failed to attract enough contributions and retention has now been relegated to just a section.The problem is that this dropout may have serious consequences for both students and distance institutions. #
- 4. This graph shows that students who drop out from full-time UK universities have a higher probability of depression, unemployment and (for women) suffering partner violence, than students who graduated or didn’t go to university at all. The subsequent cost to UK society of treating depression and paying for unemployment must be in billions of pounds.As far as I know no-one has tried to do the same analysis for distance education – given that dropped out students are its main product perhaps we should. #
- 6. There are a number of theories. A typical example is Moore’s theory of ‘Transactional Distance’ which suggests that the isolation of distance students (from other students, their tutors and the institution) is a principal factor in the higher probability of dropping out. If Moore is correct then one way of reducing dropout is to reduce that distance. But how? #
- 7. At a conference in San Diego a few years ago I heard Professor Edward Anderson say that if you wanted to make a difference to student retention you had to be proactive. It was no use waiting for students to come to you – you had to reach out to them. As he said “Students who need services the most refer themselves the least. “ But what form could that reaching out take?#
- 8. Well Anderson believed that motivation was the key to student success and that if you got the motivation sorted, everything else would follow.Now this isn’t a startling insight I guess – if you asked any number of teachers they’d agree on the importance of motivation and try to build it – usually by exhortation and example. But what Anderson seemed to be suggesting was that there were more effective ways of doing it. I had also become aware of something else in distance education#
- 9. It was to do with the term ‘E-learning’. I’d always had my doubts about some of the hype about e-learning but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was that worried me. Then I realised that whoever had invented the term e-learning might have been guilty of what the philosopher Gilbert Ryle called a ‘category error’ – confusing two essentially different things. #
- 10. What distance education institutions are doing is actually ‘E-teaching’. ‘E-learning’ is what students are doing – we hope. It may be a mistake to confuse means with hoped-for ends. Of course I’m hardly the first person to think like this#
- 11. Paul Ramsden said this more cogently several years ago (I paraphrase) “No e-teacher can ever be certain that their e-teaching will cause a learner to e-learn” and there have been plenty of others who’ve said it before. The problem with this error is that student dropout may be seen as something that can be overcome solely by better teaching. In the OU for example there is huge emphasis on teaching using various methods such as forums, webinar, blogs, podcasts, videoclipsetc#
- 12. Yet as Gibbs and Morgan noted,a student's motivation to learn had to come first. #
- 13. And as John Lubbock famously said many years ago“The important thing is not so much that every child should be taught, as that every child should be given the wish to learn.”# I began to wonder if in distance education we spend too much time on teaching and not enough on motivating our students to learn?#
- 14 So I now believe that as far as possible student support in distance education should be # Proactive # Motivational and # Individual and interactive – altho’ I don’t have any evidence for this last assertion – I just think it’s likely to be true# I call this Proactive Motivational Support but I don’t think this is very original – it looks quite like the concept of ‘Appreciative Advising’ or Gallup’s ‘Strengths Approach’ which you’ll find on the internet. How might this work?#
- 15. Well there are new theories around often associated with psychologists such as John Keller and his ARCS Theory of learning motivation, Carole Dweck with her work on Theories of Self, Martin Seligman and ‘Positive Psychology’ – the study of strengths and happiness (I’ve never found a photo of him looking happy for some reason) and John Hattie and ‘Self-reporting’ . We need to research these and other approaches to see how they might apply to distance education.But of course even if we develop a new theory of student support in distance education there will be people who will argue that making proactive individual contact with individual students is too expensive.#
- 16.. But that’s based on a false assumption – that student support for retention is just pure cost. I’ve been trying to follow work out the cost/benefits of retention in the LIP – I’m not going to try to explain this slide – I’m not sure I understand it myself - but I believe that it’s possible to show that putting money into student support actually makes money.Ignoring the algebra here it works this way.#
- 18. That barrier may be us# Veronique Johnston of Napier University says “The biggest barrier to increasing retention is the institution itself”# She means that it is institutional attitudes to students that is the problem. #
- 23. I’ve written a book which tries to explore some of these ideasThanks very much!