Failing a unit: a wake-up call on the way to success? CRADLE Seminar Series
15 June 2018
A strong turnout at Deakin Downtown and many more online joined us to hear CRADLE’s Dr Rola Ajjawi discuss academic failure and persistence in the latest presentation in our 2018 Seminar Series. Rola shared insights into why students fail, how failure impacts attrition, and how – and why – students who fail persist. Here, CRADLE PhD students Sarah Lambert and Lincoln James reflect on their key takeaways from Rola’s presentation.
Sarah reflected on how students react to failure, the complex factors that lead students to fail, and the need to assist students before a pattern of failure is established:
Startling statistics and insight into persistence after failure were a highlight of Rola’s seminar on academic failure and persistence. After the presentation, there was a broad-ranging discussion from the floor about what else staff can do to help students avoid first and subsequent unit failures. This seminar shared the outcome of three interrelated studies undertaken by Rola and colleagues to understand more about how students who fail get back up, persist, and succeed.
The first study looked at an institutional data set of over 9000 undergraduate students enrolled in four major programs (one per Faculty at Deakin) and the extent to which they failed a unit, dropped out, or continued. The second study surveyed students who failed but persisted with their studies. And the third study interviewed a sub-set from the second study, to look in depth at why they failed, and what they did about it afterwards. Amazingly, 30% of learners who had to re-do a failed unit didn’t actually change anything about their approach to learning. But for the other 70%, the failure was something of a wake-up call towards doing things differently. 58% drew on family and friends to overcome the shock and stress of failure. Most did not seek help from the various types of university supports.
Photo: Sarah Lambert
The seminar shared compelling quotes from students themselves about the combined dispositional, situational and institutional factors that lead to students failing a unit. Financial stress, work, physical and mental health issues all impact learners who already have rich, complex lives. There is stress, and sometimes poor judgements as to the amount and type of study effort required. Sometimes a bit more flexibility from the institution would go a long way. What was certainly clear was that it was too late to wait for students to have formal interventions from the Academic Progress Committees (if a student fails over 50% of their units). A range of personal and technology-mediated interventions were discussed as well as embedding wellness, help-seeking, persistence and evaluative judgement into the curriculum for all students.
Lincoln was struck by student perceptions of the institutional procedures around academic failure, and reflected on the need for institutions to combat negative perceptions around failure and institutional interventions:
Rola’s presentation explored the factors behind failure and persistence in Deakin’s undergraduate cohort. The most interesting insight for me was that institutional responses designed to help students who have failed can often be perceived as the villain, or as an obstacle in a student’s journey to complete their studies. At Deakin, students often encounter this institutional response in the form of the Academic Progress Committee (APC). It is Deakin policy that any student who fails more than 50% of their units in a trimester is required to speak to the APC, and discuss what can be done to help these students develop their academic skills and meet university expectations. This process is framed as an intervention to assist students in achieving their academic potential.
However, the interview responses and anecdotal stories that emerged from the study painted a different picture. The APC was instead perceived by students as an inhuman machine punishing students, or a bureaucratic barrier that required diplomacy and knowledge of the university to manoeuvre around. This insight brings me to ask two questions:
- What can universities do to ensure that students perceive this process as one that opens a dialogue on how and what changes need to take place, and what support students can access? and,
- How can we reframe student perceptions around failure, so that failure is seen less as something abject and shameful, and more as an opportunity to learn and do better next time?
Photo: Paige Mahoney
This second question is especially important, as universities seek to prepare students for their future lives and careers and a disrupted and unstable economy and labour market. Failure is a common experience, and we need to normalise help-seeking behaviours – not only to assist students to persist and succeed after failure, but also to equip them to respond to failure in the future.
