Building success for all our students: enhancing the first year student experience

This paper focuses upon Middlesex University’s response (ISLER Project) to concerns regarding the widening participation agendas’ implication on retention. On-going institutional research in the form of the ISLER Project (Impact of the student learning experience on retention) has been instigated, to better understand the issues that affect our first year students, in particular academic related factors which contribute to student departure and/or persistence. Findings illustrated reasons for non-completion often consisted of a mixture of academic related factors coupled with factors external to academic issues. Factors influential to student departure included academic preparedness, staff/student and peer relationships, students’ concerns regarding aspects of learning and teaching. Factors that fostered persistence included institutional aspects of adopting active learning techniques, formative assessments, regular feedback, adopted techniques to make students feel a sense of belonging to the university and course, tied with personal traits of investment, self efficacy beliefs and motivation