Retention-What Really works?

The common approaches to retention revolve around "bolt-on" solutions that focus on providing support to students in order to aid their adjustment to the university culture. There remains little evidence of the effect of such solutions on bottom line retention. The research presented was carried out by a practitioner as part of an action research project that focused on changing the institutional culture in the classroom. Large lectures were replaced with smaller seminars and performance in terms of student attainment and retention compared. It was found that the seminar system produced significantly better performance in students especially those with lower UCAS points and this additionally resulted in an improvement in retention.