Co-authored by Kathy Egea, Natalie Bradbury and Lucy Blakemore
Some things get better when you experience them again: great books and movies with plot twists; beautiful holiday spots; slow-cooked meals like lasagne where it always tastes better the next day. Repeating a subject at university, however, is not usually one of these things. When a student receives an email with the words ‘failed’ and ‘repeat’, it’s more likely to prompt frustration and disappointment; if the subject was especially difficult, there’s no way they’re looking forward to doing it all again.
Some repeats are to be expected; life gets in the way, incidents or illnesses throw everything off course, and a student has to take a deep breath and have another go. When it’s happening more often or persistently in a subject, however, that’s our cue to pause, review and ask how we can better support repeating students, and longer term, how we can prevent unnecessary repeats in the future.
When ‘just try harder’ just doesn’t cut it
It’s all too easy to put the onus back onto individuals to knuckle down and do the work, but in most cases, simply asking students to try harder this time won’t make much difference. Without intervention, students may lose confidence and motivation, take on more study load than they can manage and increase the risk of further failure. Much-needed scholarships may be put at risk and carefully planned timing disrupted, including delayed entry into the workforce.
Understanding why repeats happen over multiple iterations of a subject can help to break a cycle of failure, going beyond individuals to surface systemic issues like academic preparedness, equity factors, subject design and pedagogical delivery. To make things trickier, there’s no one-size-fits-all here; whilst one subject may reveal an issue with mathematics foundational knowledge in first year students, another may need to consider an increasing number of mature students who are struggling to balance study with parenting or work commitments.
This is where we need to do what education does best; go back to the data and ask the right questions, then act on the evidence we find.
Using insights from the Subject Dashboard: 3 examples
If you’re a subject coordinator, you can access data about repeat students in the Subject Dashboard. This data includes other subjects they are taking/repeating, we well as recording the previous mark in the failed subject and the number of times it was repeated. Below, we connect with 3 UTS educators on how the dashboard’s data supports responses to students who are repeating a subject.
Personalising emails, offering support
Amanda White (Business) has a large Business first-year undergraduate cohort, with up to 10% of students repeating her subject. Repeating students get personalised emails offering support and tips to avoid misconduct from recycling previous assessment submissions. With such a large cohort, she argues that there needs to be a faculty response to supporting this cohort, beyond relying on academic caution programs.
Christine Giles (Law) relates her practice of supporting the few repeating students in the postgraduate subjects of the degree program she convenes. As course coordinator, she undertook the role of managing all students who were repeating one or more subjects in this program. Christine sent personalised emails to each student and offered one-to-one meetings. Her message to students was to use the past result as a strength, and build greater understanding of their own learning, as well as increase their awareness of academic integrity. All who stayed after census date successfully passed the subjects they were taking.
Tailoring strategies for different cohorts
Gavin Paul (FEIT) teaches both a first-year and a later year undergraduate cohort. Using the Subject Dashboard to identify repeat students, he tailors support to three groups:
- Students on academic caution;
- Students who did little or no work in the previous session;
- Students who were very close to passing.
Students on academic caution are supported through course coordinator processes, including academic integrity guidance. For those with minimal prior engagement, Gavin provides a short checklist of must-do activities and prompts a reflection on interest, workload, and fit before census. For near-pass students, he highlights specific skills and assessment areas to prioritise, together with an integrity refresher. Across both subjects, dashboard comparisons indicate an approximate 25-30% improvement in repeat-student pass rates associated with this early, structured approach.
Supporting repeating students through early and targeted outreach
Natalie Bradbury (Director, Student Experience) highlights that student success relies on a partnership approach to support students across 4 key domains of academic engagement, wellbeing, belonging and partnerships, also outlined in the UTS Student Experience Framework. With support from the Data Analytics and Insights Unit, the team has developed a predictive model that helps to identify students at risk of early attrition (commencers) and subject failure (continuers).
This means that in addition to the work that is happening at subject level and in the classroom, repeating students and other students at risk are also centrally supported with an outreach campaign.
Evolving methods to reach those who need it most
In the past, our outreach has relied heavily on phone calls, but with changing student behaviours and connection rates dropping each year, this session we have transitioned to a communications-based approach with a tiered intervention model. Students who need support the most receive the highest level of support.
Natalie Bradbury
Continuing students at risk are contacted early in the teaching session with a text message and email offering support. These messages encourage students to be proactive in seeking help, accessing support services and engaging with their learning. Students are offered an opportunity to meet with a Peer Advisor who can assist with identifying which services a student may benefit from accessing and arranging referrals to those services. Information and links about available support services are also provided for students to access themselves, on their own terms.
Follow-up texts and emails guide students to seek support if they need to make changes to their subject selections, and remind them of key dates and deadlines such as Last Day to Enrol and Census. Text messages in particular have been found to be an effective and low barrier way for students to accept offers of support. Having the option to hear about and accept support via SMS:
- Reduces psychological barriers to help seeking by meeting students where they are;
- Is a micro-interaction that builds trust;
- Cuts through information overload and follows up with details in emails;
- Supports time sensitive nudges.
As well as linking to academic support services, the outreach campaign also highlights the importance of wellbeing and belonging to student success and encourages students to prioritise their health, wellbeing and connection, promoting activities such as the Wellbeing lounge and the Peer Network Café.
Further reading and resources
Find out more about the Subject Dashboard in the blogs and videos shared here, or contact Kathy.Egea@uts.edu.au if you have specific questions to explore.
- Learning from history: how well do you know students in your subject?
- 9 questions about the Student 360 Subject Dashboard answered
- Stories from the subject dashboard
You can also explore more details about the 4 domains of the Student Experience Framework on the UTS staff intranet.