This is an interesting aspect of the tutor role and to my mind revolves in part around understanding the person as an individual as well as understanding a little about their circumstances. Should they be willing to be sufficiently open about that then hopefully some clarity of the context and root cause issue can be surfaced. Once that is understand then some collaborative coaching should I would hope be able the individual to outline a roadmap to get on track / improve. This might for example include specific 1:1, additional learning sources, perhaps buddying up with another student for some aspects, perhaps being encouraged to take a lead in a group discussion. 

There are parallels here to the world of business in terms of how to motivate and manage teams to achieve both as a team and as a collection of individuals.

'Encouraging students' and 'individualising the learning experience and making things personal' are my two steps. 

Students that have never studied with the OU and also have not studied for years, may have little knowledge of how they learn, especially if they have never experienced distance learning before. A lack of engagement may signify they don't know how to, specifically for them. Are they visual learners, audio learners, practical learners and/or book worms. How do they process what they are learning? 

I myself, I write on the walls (not directly these days) I have used chalkboard walls and/or poster paper. It helps me engage to be standing and writing expressively (the kind that comes with writing on walls in larger than life text.) I also I work better with a goal, directed reading, reading with a purpose stops everything falling straight out. 

A conversation with the students to ask how they are doing may be the best course of action in this situation. Allowing them to lead the conversation, to encourage them to engage with you and subsequently the module materials.

I really like Lucy's answer above, about learning styles, it is really difficult to know what works for us as an individual, and I think that encouraging the learner to be a bit playful and experiment with what works for them would be a good approach.

Also, I have never come across the term 'Feeding forward' but I think this is really important, sometimes we lose track of why we are actually doing things!

I think contacting the student directly is important so they know that you care about them and their learning journey.

My two are

• Evaluating strengths and weaknesses in students
• Encouraging reflective practice in the student

Being flexible and responsive to the needs of students - Discuss with those students who are not performing what difficulties they are having with the course, and see if arrangements can be made to make them more comfortable with the tutoring process.

Encouraging students - Working with students to show them what they have learned and accomplished so far on the course and help them regain some drive to continue.

Hi,

I initially chose:

Individualising the learning experience and making it personal; e.g. by emailing phoning directly or 

and

Evaluating strengths and weaknesses in students; find out why they are not attending or completing TMAs

I have read through other's responses and I also did not understand what feedforward was but now I think study skills such as setting time aside to regularly to complete work is very important.

Adrian

Encouraging students – they may be feeling overwhelmed with developing study skills as well as taking in the subject material. I would ask them to break down the steps required in order to move forward as well as reviewing what they have achieved so far.

Facilitating the development of skills – once I know what skills they need to develop I would point to/provide resources to help the student develop these. Like Lucy I am a visual learner so I might encourage students to use tools such as mind maps, flowcharts etc.

Other important steps would be: Being flexible and responsive to the needs of students; Evaluating strengths and weaknesses in students

• Encouraging students
• Teaching students
• Facilitating the development of skills
• Helping students attain learning outcomes
• Individualising the learning experience and making it personal
• Being flexible and responsive to the needs of students
• Evaluating strengths and weaknesses in students
• Encouraging reflective practice in the student
• Identifying the next steps in learning
• Feeding forward and determining the mid to long-term goals of the student
• Encouraging independent learning.

I would email the struggling students asking if there was anything they felt was missing in the service I was providing them with. And also asking if there were any personal issues surrounding there recent somewhat disappointing TMA scores. I would suggest they put a realistic recovery plan in place to achieve a desired objective in terms of final module score.

The tutor could send an email to each of the students with feedback on their academic performance. 

After providing them with the feedback, the tutor could ask the students what they think the problem is while assuring the students of his willingness to support them in attaining the expected learning outcomes.

Once the tutor gets a reply from the students on what they think the problems are, the tutor will be better positioned to support or signpost them as the case maybe.

It may also be a good idea to ask the students if they fancy joining a group of other students to study together. This will help the students to collaborate, inspire one another and enrich their learning experience.

I would contact the students to start with and ask them if there were any particular problems or issues that I could help them with. As new students to the OU there could be a range of possible factors affecting their performance. They could be struggling to put aside time to study or to study without disturbance. It could be they need some guidance how to make best use of study materials provided. Or it could be they don't understand the material and need it presented in a different way or perhaps directed to alternative resources.

Even if their TMA was poor, I would want to find something positive about it (which would hopefully have been included in the TMA feedback). But sometimes with feedback it's very easy for the student to just see the negative and ignore the positive completely, so reiterating what they had done well and providing guidance/direction on areas requiring improvement, as well as just general encouragement.

I think restoring confidence is going to be one of the key things, and getting the students in the frame of mind to learn from their mistakes and take the feedback as useful rather than a judgement 

In my experience, students who do badly often take one of two approaches - they decide they aren’t cut out for it (blame themselves) or go for external blame - “the materials aren’t clear” or “the question was ambiguous” or “my tutor marked me down”. So alongside the study skills aspects others have discussed, I think a bit of a focus on learning from feedback and developing a growth mindset would be helpful. It would be helpful to agree some achievable targets from the work so far.  It’s really important they get some experience of success fairly quickly.

Also, students who’re disappointed may stop studying for a bit, then if they feel like starting again, panic - so helping them plan what they can do to get back on track, and prioritise the material that’s really urgent, 

Might also be useful, before conversations, to have a look at anything analytics can show about how they are engaging with the module site 

Encouraging students and determining the mid to long-term goals of the student

Since it is only a few students that need to be encouraged it might be appropriate to understand what motivated each of the poorly performing students to start the module in the first place. By having a one to one conversations (email, phone, telco) about the reasons, the students might well gained a renewed enthusiasm to engage with the learning experience.

Being flexible and responsive to the needs of students

During the conversation an obvious question would be "is there any way that I can adjust the module delivery to make it more accessible to you?".

Agreeing with other colleague, I think encouraging students to assimilate the module tasks with their own experience would be the most appropriate approach 

When I started OU, I was so overwhelmed with my new workload (fulltime job and OU) and the generally massive amount of material to cover (viewed from someone returning to study) that I lost sight of the TMA deadline (I was working on the wrong TMA with a later deadline). Then when the deadline came and went (the day after) I didn’t even realise that an extension was possible. The subject matter was easy enough that given a three day extension, I would have been able to finish at least 80% of the TMA. But it ended up that I got zero points for that TMA and  shortly after was contacted by an impersonal Mr SST with a generic offer of assistance to review the number of courses I was taking.

So, if I knew that I had a few students who had not studied for a number of years and never studied with the OU, as a Tutor, I would have acted well before the TMA deadline and even before the tutorial by contacting each of the new students by email or otherwise to welcome them and establish an ongoing personal contact. I would have followed up several times before the first TMA deadline to see if they were proceeding OK and if I perceived any issues I would have organised a one-to-one session on a sample topic of the Unit under study to see if they had any difficulties with the subject and to review a typical good TMA style answer to a sample problem.

In brief, I would apply a “preventive medicine” tutoring support knowing by experience the difficulties one can encounter when coming back or starting University level studies and I would establish immediate contact with a strong personal welcome reinforced by several interactions before the first TMA deadline.

I guess this puts my method  under the following two captions:

-          Individualising the learning experience and making it personal

-          Being flexible and responsive to the needs of students

(but other captions are equally relevant)

Need to encourage students to continue their studies, by reflecting on what they have already achieved to date and to put the achievement to date in the context of what they can achieve on the course- plan ahead.

The students who have not studied for a few years, may have additional barriers to learning and not aware of the approach and discipline needed to self motivate through a distance learning course.

Measures to bring them back on track could be using the following strategies

Checking in with students on an individual basis or through phone to discuss any difficulties they may have- identify strengths and weaknesses then signpost resources and give motivation / encouragement to move forward. if this does not work also investigate ALS/additional support especially if there is an appropriate disclosure

Target setting - setting smaller manageable goals with more frequent check ins for a period of time. Providing clear feedback on the TMAs and also signposting learners to appropriate resources so they can find solutions themselves.

1. Individualising the learning experience and making it personal.
2. Being flexible and responsive to the needs of students.

I would consider engaging the students at the next session by organising a group seminar. At the seminar, I would be looking to capture student views on how they are getting on with the course, how they feel they are doing, any difficulties they are having with learning material or learning and what they expect from the course. Sometimes disengagement or disinterest can be due to students not finding the course as they expected and it may be that adapting the learning material to achieve learning goals and meet their needs is needed. 

Arrange module discussion time, allowing a little time at middle and end of a module, particularly before any TMA are due to ensure students know and understand what is expected of them in assignments and beyond this that they are also up to date with learning goals and keeping to their study plans. This is also an opportunity to encourage sharing of learning and or study tips. 

Develop strategies to support and engage the students with the students as co owners of solutions.  

I would suggest the main interventions would be:

• Evaluate strengths and weaknesses of students,
• individualise the learning experience.
  

It is vital to identify the issues impacting on student performance and to plan some remedial practices to recover the situation before stress factors drive the students away.

You could look at all of the strategies suggested and conclude that at some time and place they would add value.

In my own experience when teaching with a disparate group, the one thing you have to try to do is to individualise the experience. In my current role we get Computer Science students coming to us from another school. They teach CS at GCSE in a different way to our programme the consequence being that the students are far less capable as practical coders than our students. Those "visiting" students then have a slightly different programme, not in terms of content but how we deliver that content to them. Generally all students are on an even keel by the beginning of Year 12.

I always feel high energy and encouragement is of universal benefit, the teacher who is engaged and excited about the work they are doing will often carry the students with them. I understand that "reflective" practice is very much a buzz word at the moment, and whilst I think that an element of thinking about what we have done and why we have done it is useful, it does concern me that an over-emphasis especially drifting into phenomenonology is not helpful.

Actually out of the list of bullet points I would probably end up doing all of them to some extent. Having managed teams in the IT industry for a few years the only one missing is the one I always tried to avoid - first threatening and then giving someone the "boot" - however in a business people are paid money to be there, whereas in the OU people are paying money to be there so it's not the same at all!

I can't help feeling that if there are several in the group who are having issues it might be a sign of some other problem. I would consider that too.

To answer the question, if I have to choose two bullet points they would be - 

·       Facilitating the development of skills

You could help them out in the short term but only they can sort out any underlying issues. If they have not been in a learning situation for many years they will undoubtably need to learn how to learn again.

·       Feeding forward and determining the mid to long-term goals of the student

From the list, two steps the tutor can take to get the students back on track with their studies are:

1. Encouraging students
2. Individualising the learning experience and making it personal

Two other methods:

  A. Find ways to make the material more interesting, for example, relating it to a real life current situation

  B. Use some form of group activity or challenge.

I think that I would first try and talk to the students about their previous learning experience, whether it was good and what they remember liking about it or what was helpful to them. I would try to identify if there was anything obvious lacking from the current OU course which I could put right. Another approach in a second step would be to try to help them identify stumbling blocks in their learning and helping them fill in the missing steps.

I think I would contact the student to analyse the reasons for being unsuccesful at the TMA and then I would work with them on a plan to reach the learning outcomes required to pass the TMA. 

Another method I could suggest is to have regular virtual meetings or calls to monitor the progress in relation to the established plan.

If students haven't studied for a number of years but also haven't studied with the OU I would assume that the best way of supporting them would be to work on

• Facilitating the development of skills

since this might be a hindrance to their ability to focus, stay engaged and learn.  What I have found in the classroom with younger learners is that their barriers are quite often not intellectual, but generally to do with their ability to participate due to a lack of something else.  So, for OU learners I would assume that the remote learning environment and technology might be big hurdles for them.  I would try and help students with overcoming these by making trying to 

• Individualise the learning experience and making it personal

so that they feel supported and able to re-engage with the learning.

I think encouraging the students is one key thing although this may take different forms depending upon interactions with the student and what we discover motivates them.

I also thing that "Feeding forward and determining the mid to long-term goals of the student" is important  as this is part of understanding what motivates the students, which may not be study related in a direct sense. There may be opportunities then to make the learning experience more learner centred and this feel more relevant to the learners goals and interests.

It is hard to respond without just repeating things that others have said previously. 

For me, if a student has struggled with in item of work I help to break down where in their initial learning the missing link is. This can be time consuming, but with experience of the course materials, you can start to identify common points where it is likely to happen.

Helping students overcome any barriers or blockage by giving them particular study techniques can also set them up for successes later on in the course, as well as other courses.

I think that the tutor needs to fulfil two roles here to help the struggling students.

Primarily they need to support and encourage them - to ensure that they do not lose interest or engagement in the module. But this will be greatly facilitated by getting the more successful students involved in supporting them - to create something of a role model for them to follow.

The tutor needs to put in place the framework, through support and guidance, to develop the goals - short term and longer term to help the students succeed. This will likely involve facilitating the development of their study skills.

Poor marks does not necessarily equate to disengagement, nor does it necessarily mean there is issue with the online tutorial.

It could be that the learners have had difficulty matching their knowledge and skills with the learning outcomes, especially if they’ve not studied for a long time. The marks may give indication of where there are strengths and weaknesses in their knowledge or skills, which in turn may suggest an appropriate action plan to help facilitate improving their competence in particular areas. You can then be more individualised, encouraging their strengths whilst focusing on supporting with examples of how they can meet gaps in the learning outcomes and improve their assignment towards this.

• Individualising the learning experience and making it personal
• Identifying the next steps in learning

By individualising the learning this can make students re-engage and take ownership of their learning.

By making clear the next steps, students will feel in control again after maybe losing their footing. They can refresh and focus on what needs to be done to achieve their goals.

Firstly, I would find out if there are any issues preventing the student from engaging with their studies. They may have things going on in life that are taking precedence. I would offer any support necessary to encourage the student. 

If the student had not studied for a long time, or not studied with the OU, I would suggest some support with their study skills. They may be struggling with working independently, or online. They may not be aware of some of the ICT support available, or how certain aspects of online learning work. I would ensure that the student was confident in accessing the information needed to carry out their studies. 

I would encourage the student to look at feedback given for previous TMAs and reflect upon their learning. This would help them to feel motivated, but also to have an awareness of any areas needing improvement, providing them with a goal. 

I would look at individualising the learning experience for those students whilst encouraging them to ask me questions or express concerns to me, so that I could better assist them.

Get to know your students as individuals so that you have an understanding of any issues they have come in with as this can help you to help them move forward and break down the learning barriers.

Try to identify any specific issues and work with students to set a series of short term acheivable goals so they feel less over-whelmed by the experience.

From the list I would say the two steps to try and re-engage the students would be:

* Encouraging students,

* Helping students attain learning outcomes.

It can be demoralising if it seems like you're struggling and/or falling behind. In these situations it can help to try and find some "quick wins" for the student to improve their self-confidence and help them win back some motivation to continue. Also, it's worth trying to find out what their personal situation is at the time. They may have other difficulties which are impacting their studies at this time or they may need help with developing study skills and routines so that they can learn to keep up etc.

• Individualising the learning experience and making it personal - So trying to understand is it a time issue, or an understanding of the content problem and suggest ways to approach either differently. 

• Evaluating strengths and weaknesses in students - If it's someone who hasn't done intensive learning before, trying to give confidence about the areas of strength they do have. Then find tips for the areas of weakness as above. 

I'm not sure what it would look like when a student is disengaging from a module. 

My first step would be "Feeding forward and determining the mid to long-term goals of the student". That is I would endeavour to discover why they are under preforming and not taking part. By doing this you could then discuss how to move forward and build a plan. 

Secondly, if the student wishes, employ the "Individualising the learning experience and making it personal" step. See if there is a way I can help them with OU study, it maybe as simple as helping them organise their time. Early on they may find it hard to put their studies first, helping them to refocus could help with this.

I think looking at the options they could all be utilised in their won right to support re engagement. I think the key part is early intervention and having conversations with the students and ascertaining any reasons for concerns. From there targets and positivity around flexible approaches and support tutorials to try and really encourage re engagement and also other strategies such as assigning lead roles in tasks and buddying have worked well in the past 

My first thought would be get in touch with the individual students to get a feel for whether or not they are really disengaging.- which I guess comes under 'Feeding forward and determining the mid to long-term goals of the student' From then on other things come naturally, Do they just need encouragement? Do they need advice on study skills? Or prehaps just with organising their time so they can study? Is there some area they need special help with?

If there are several students with an issue, it is unlikely that there is a one size fits all solution, but if you don't know what the problem is you are not going to be able to fix it

I chose:

Encouraging students because helps the student to look ahead and moving forward.

Helping students attain learning outcomes.By understanding those will be easy to understand what knowledge or skills the students should acquire.

For both I would offer to the students a further support by email or phone and/or video call trying also to "evaluate strengths and weaknesses in students".

The two steps I would take are:

- Encouraging students. Contacting the students by email and if I don't get a reply, making sure to follow up by telephone. It is important that the students believe that completing the module is attainable, and that they have the encouragement and support they need to progress.

- Individualising the learning experience and making it personal. Try to understand why the students have fallen behind; make sure they are aware of all the resources that are available from the OU and where to find them; identify any weaknesses and answer questions or explain concepts, and provide links to resources that address their specific weaknesses.

I would also include:

- Teaching students. Specifically, if there is a definite need for a supplementary one-one session with the student, this can be arranged.

- Feeding forward and determining the mid to long-term goals of the student. Helping with study skills and developing a plan to manage the workload more effectively.

This is a situation I would dread!

I think that a first step would 'Evaluating strengths and weaknesses in students'. Find out what it is that the stduents find difficult about the module, or uninteresting. Then 'Identifying the next steps in learning' should break the module in learning steps and see how the students respond. These two steps would involve 'Individualising the learning experience and making it personal' techniques: either phone ins or video meetings with students to pinpoint each of the difficulties the students encounter.

My thoughts are that the student(s) will need individualised learning support and as newbies this may involve refreshing or discovering new study skills esp in the distance learning environment.

I agree with all of the replies and I think 1:1 first to find out the difficulties as quite often in social media groups, answers to questions are decided upon without tutor guidance and quite often misunderstood. Evaluating the strength and weaknesses of the student may be an idea and work through the other bullet points to find out where the help is required further.

My first steps would be to speak to the student and be encouraging, point out what they have done well.  Also, ask if there are any issues or what they feel would be useful in order to progress/improve.  I would also say that individualising the learning experience would work well here, by providing some 1:1 or small group sessions, or additional resources.  

Students may also need some assistance with reflecting on their feedback and utilising it effectively, possibly with some enhanced action points/areas where they can improve on a similar assignment.  Video/audio feedback can enhance utilisation of written feedback.

It is also useful to many learners to set some short/medium term goals, such as using a formative assessment, or breaking the assessment down into stages.  Equally partnering a student with a more experienced learner to provide some peer-assisted learning/support would also be effective.  

For me, having been in this situation previously, the best way to approach this would be to have a 1:1 discussion with the student to find out what is holding them back, what are the reasons for them dropping out of discussions or not achieving the results that might be expected of them. Once you get to the underlying issues then you can develop a strategy to help them. It may well be that they are struggling with managing their time, or they feel that the other members of the group are more experienced and monopolise situations and therefore do not feel willing or able to contribute or are maybe not able to keep up with other students. All of this is normal and highlighting that it is normal and ok to feel like this can help enormously and then some positive encouragement, and support to get through the difficulties will help the student turn things around and feel like help and support is there.

encouraging the students by email individualising the learning experience and making it personal

Being flexible and responsive to the needs of students helping them to fix their long time goals .

the feedback during the TMAs may encourage them progress

I guess the first step would be to talk to the students individually to try to understand the causes of their problems.

I would try to reassure them that the OU is trying to help them - not reprimand them and involve them in making a plan for them to fix issues. I would communicate this with them as clearly as possible.

Having put some mitigation in place I would then try to monitor what happens next and make sure that I followed up with them on progress.

I would talk to my staff tutor to get advice. This must be a common problem for some students and I would think that the OU generally has a lot of experience in these issues.

I would try to understand if there is any assistance for them that is available from the OU.

Maybe there are particular aspects that they are struggling with. If there are some gaps in their background knowledge, then I might be able to suggest alternative sources of information - or arrange seminars that concentrate on particularly difficult aspects. Maybe there are some themes that emerge that might direct me to what to concentrate on

Depending on the nature of the assignments it might be that I could encourage them to work collaboratively with other students.

Van

This is an important aspect of the tutor role and the two steps that could be applied are as follows:

1. Individualising the learning experience and making it personal - The tutor should try to understand the student's personal circumstances and use that to tailor the learning experience for them.

2. Encouraging the student - The tutor should also go further by offering 1-1 meetings to the student for further engagement and support. This could be done via email and/or phone. 

In addition to the steps stated above, the tutor can also direct the student to further resources that can help futher their understanding of the learning materials.

I guess one might argue that all of the steps are appropriate but encouraging students in their endeavours would be a good first step however this is done. Having a one to one discussion, ideally via a telephone conversation, provides the tutor with an opportunity to understand more about how the student is managing their studies in turn enabling the tutor to individualise the learning experience and making it personal/more relevant to the student's interests and needs. 

Offering follow up discussions, maintaining a two way conversation, accentuating the positives about progress whilst ensuring the student understands what they need to do to improve this can also be useful

This is interesting as I can think of more than two of the steps in order to help the students progress and engage their enthusiasm.

Firstly, I would encourage the students by speaking with them either by phone or video and identify if they lack some of the online skills which the other participants have, or if they are finding distance learning more difficult than expected.  If they are lacking some skills, obviously I would facilitate the development of these skills.

Next, I would identify the next steps in learning and help them to identify where they may need more help, whether that is taking a more active part in discussion forums so as not to feel so alone in the study or having more tutor contact or developing new study skills.

With different students, the needs may be varied and so the same approach may not apply to all of the struggling students.  It may be useful to put them in contact with each so that they realise they are not the only student who is new to the OU.

I think the following is best:

Encouraging students

Reach out to students individually to provide support and motivation. Let them know you're available to assist with any questions or concerns.

Identifying the next steps in learning

Create personalised study plans for each student. Identify their unique needs and goals to help them navigate the module more effectively.

Thanks - an interesting case study and one I suspect is quite common.

For me I believe the two key steps from the learnings in 2.6 would be:

1. Encouraging students. If they feel disengaged the first task is to get them re-engaged with the course through 1-2-1 session to remind them and encourage them to continue the journey they wanted to personally undertake, and offer them support to address their concerns around being new to distance learning, or the time it had been since they last undertook academic study. Signposting to useful links on the OU site will help with exploring these topics further.

2. Feeding forward and determining the mid to long-term goals of the student. In support of the first point, helping the student to think about the road ahead and their goals they wish to obtain both in the current course and maybe more broader if they are on a degree programme. Using the plan as a tool to help focus them on small steps to get to the outcome they want to achieve.

This problem arises particularly when the students are from very different backgrounds. In that case there are certain students in the module that are not coping with the rest of the group. Two main steps are required to address their weaknesses.

1)      Evaluating strengths and weaknesses in students

2)      Encouraging independent learning.

However, if the students are given "extra assignments"  according to the topics they are lagging and ask them to do some independent study and the once they submit the assignment feedback is provided, this will aid to their understanding.

Encouragement is very important in such circumstances. Students who are trying to get back into studying may well find that the process is more difficult than they imagined, and, if they do not do well in TMAs, will need encouragement to maintain or increase their learning.

Feeding forward: A phrase I had not used before, but when described as "the opposite of feedback", it becomes clearer. Providing constructive guidance on how to do better to students with poor results using feedback from past results can help students identify those parts of the syllabus which need improving and how that improvement can be made.  

Selecting two from the list:

• Encouraging students
• Being flexible and responsive to the needs of students

In reality one should get on a call with those students and try and understand where they are at and give them an opportunity to tell you how they feel things are going. Only at that point should the tutor share their thoughts and together with the student figure out a concrete personalised action plan going forwards.