Supporting Younger Students with Weekly Communications

This project explores whether structured weekly email contact, relating to specific aspects of the module that students are studying, helps to support and retain younger students (i.e. those aged under 25 years). 

Experienced tutors who have taught on first year modules at the Open University report how young students, sometimes straight from school, struggle with university study and may be the first from their family to attend higher education. More regular contact and encouragement is often how tutors keep students going, as well as breaking down assignments into more manageable smaller tasks, and demystifying complex concepts within the module content. This encouraging communication is often provided by email. 

This project builds on an earlier successful small-scale project where second year students on a psychology module were emailed weekly with important deadline information, advice about assessment and highlighting potential pitfalls coming up. This project is doing something similar with first year students studying a core psychology module. A sample of around 300 students (some aged over 25 years) within a university region will receive the emails. The impact on retention around difficult periods of the module, where concepts become challenging, is a particular focus of this research.  

The project involves a survey sent out to students to assess their opinion of the emails, and whether they have helped them to continue on the module and feel more connected to their tutor and the university. Retention comparisons with other groups of students in different regions on the same module will also be made, as well as with retention data from previous years. Analysis will look at whether younger students in particular found the emails beneficial. The outcomes of this research will be published in September 2021.