Discussion Forum Programme
Students at Risk

An overview of the Student at Risk program (SAR) in the Faculty of Science at the University of Melbourne will be presented. This discussion will include the criteria which are used to identify a student at risk, the follow up by academic staff and student advisors and the method for developing collaboratively with the student, strategies for improving outcome in future semesters of study. Changes to the program have been implemented over a number of years after regular evaluation, and these will be also be discussed.

As the first year intake becomes more diverse, we can no longer assume that all our new students come to us with equivalent academic backgrounds. As more students choose to take alternative entry paths into higher education, many of them come to us without the fundamental skills necessary for becoming successful tertiary students, and lacking confidence in themselves as learners. Indeed, with the recent trend for removal of pre-requisites for first year subjects, even our school leavers may lack the background knowledge and skills that we could once have expected from them. Increasingly, then, the role of first year co-ordinator has widened to include more extensive pastoral care. This must begin even before the students walk into their first classes. First year students may be identified as being "at risk" academically or socially, and such risk factors usually overlap or reinforce each other. Support programs may include bridging units, either generic or discipline-specific, mentoring programs, and the organisation of study groups. I will describe some of the strategies we have put in place for life science students at the University of Tasmania, and discuss the different responsibilities of the school and the university in supporting students at risk.

We have provided a mid course practice examination for our students in their first semester of study at university. It is paper-based, taken in class time and administered under examination conditions in order to give the students as close to the “real” examination experience as possible. The students mark their scripts in their own time from either a paper-based version or an online version. To gain feedback on their answers students use the online version in an interactive way. The feedback is aimed at helping students identify their understanding of course concepts, which in turn might indicate the need for some remedial action. This also helps reduce the stress about end of course examinations, and hopefully, allow students to achieve at a high level in the final assessment. Students perceived to be “at risk” are encouraged to use our online revision materials, designed to enhance student understanding of major topic areas.

In 2002 we investigated student perceptions of a variety of self-help opportunities including the use of the mock exam. Nearly all the students (97%) took the exam but at the time of the survey only 28% of the students had marked it in their own time from online or offline materials. Generally speaking, students who had marked the mock exam found this to be a useful adjunct to their learning. However, students responded less positively to the summative resources (weekly quiz, report and poster presentation) than to the formative resources (mid-course exam, self-assessment modules and weekly self-test quiz). Students indicated that used the marking of the exam for revision and consolidating knowledge rather than learning new knowledge, and that marking the exam helped them become aware of their own understanding.

With the support of a Science Faculty Teaching Development Grant we have been attempting to develop a program to identify and help junior science students at risk of failure. Results at the end of their first semester are obviously one way to identify struggling students, but come too late to prevent the first stumble in their progress through university! We have focussed on ways to identify those students most at risk during their first semester. This has involved comparing marks from various assessment tasks throughout the semester with end-of-semester exam marks in Biology, Chemistry, Physics and Mathematics. Our results indicate that performance in tasks throughout the semester are poor indicators of final marks, suggesting that there is no simple way to identify students at risk early in a semester.

Students entering university face a multitude of new challenges, whether they come straight from a high school setting, or are mature age entrants. Problems cover the gamut from difficulties with administration, personal problems that impinge on academic performance, choosing the wrong study program, social isolation, lack of sufficient academic skills, and difficulties with workload.

Many universities have excellent orientation activities that assist in the induction of students over the first few weeks. In most cases, however, there is no organised system of assisting students in a holistic way after this initial phase. To address this problem, the Division of Environmental and Life Sciences at Macquarie University appointed a First Year Student Support Officer to both investigate the needs of first year students from across the Division and to start to tackle those needs.

The Student Support Officer is available to respond to students who seek help, but, more importantly, aims to be proactive in identifying "at risk" students. The intention is to work with unit coordinators to identify students experiencing problems at an early enough stage that intervention will be beneficial. Other initiatives include developing student materials tackling generic skills that are context specific, researching details of the student cohort and in specific units, identifying groups of students with particular needs.

This position also affords the opportunity to work with unit coordinators to make changes that will benefit students e.g. building scaffolding for assigned work, changing the study guides to make the course structure clearer, suggesting changes to lecturing procedures to assist NESB students, changing assignments to include higher order thinking skills. There is a rich resource of information in student comments in interviews and in personal observations that can be used to give feedback to unit coordinators and other staff.

The appointment of an academic dedicated to the needs of first year students has several spinoffs, including building bridges between various student services and the Division, and having an academic who can communicate student needs to colleagues and who is able to actually help in making the changes needed. Thus the Student Support Officer has the potential to be a positive instrument for change.