Assessing the Impact of Changes to the Tuition Model for English Literature Modules in Terms of Attendance, Attainment, and Retention

In the past, Open University tutorials tended to be run by individual tutors for the students assigned to their tutor group.  Since 2016, however, there has been a move to ‘group tuition’ which allows students to attend tutorials running at their preferred time and venue (including online) regardless of which tutor was teaching.   

In late 2019, there were a series of changes introduced to the tuition strategies for our undergraduate English Literature modules (A230, Reading and Studying Literature, A233, Telling stories – the novel and beyond, A334, English Literature from Shakespeare to Austen, A335, Literature in Transition: 1800 to the present).  The idea for this project, therefore, emerged from our desire to interrogate the effectiveness of those changes.  In particular, we wanted to collect feedback from students on their experiences of tuition, including some pilot ‘Joint Day Schools’ (that took place during the 2019 presentation). Another key innovation was the return, in A233, A334, and A335, to a greater focus on the tutor group via regular, tutor group only online sessions which offered students regular opportunities to meet their own tutors and other students in their group.   

A significant part of the project, then, involves analysing data on tuition attendance for these modules both prior to the tuition strategy changes (2017-2019) and immediately after it (2019-2022).  This will help us ascertain whether attendance patterns have changed, and, more specifically, whether there is a positive impact on retention, completion and attainment resulting from the increase in tutor group support.  Alongside this, the project will consider retention and progression data, including noting withdrawal points, to identify any patterns of behaviour and review the best timing for tutor group only sessions to seek to address retention issues.