GRIFFITH UNIVERSITY
STUDENT SUCCESS AND RETENTION TEAMS
A Briefing Paper to Support Academic Leadership
Deans (Learning and Teaching) &
Griffith Institute for Higher Education
WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF THIS PAPER?
The University requires Griffith Schools and degree programs to develop,
implement and evaluate strategies to facilitate the success and retention
of our students. To progress these goals Student Success and Retention
Teams (SSRTs) are being established in each academic element.
This paper is designed to help SSRTs get off to a good start. It is
organised in two sections:
What is an SSRT and why do we need them?
This section provides the context and rationale for establishing SSRTs
and how they fit into the broader Griffith strategy. This will be of interest to
all potential members of SSRTs. This section is about 3 pages in length
and will take you about 10 minutes to read.
How do we put SSRTs into practice?
This section provides practical and procedural information to support the
establishment and development of your SSRT. This will be of particular
interest if you are involved in sponsoring or leading an SSRT in your
academic element. This section can also be used to guide initial thinking
and discussion to form or further develop your SSRT.
Griffith University Student Success and Retention Teams:
Empowering local ownership and local leadership for student success
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SECTION 1
What is a Student Success and Retention Team
(SSRT) and why do we need them?
This section provides the context and rationale for establishing SSRTs and how they fit
into the broader Griffith strategy. This will be of interest to all potential members of
SSRTs. This section is about 3 pages in length and will take you about 10 minutes to
read.
WHAT IS OUR CONTEXT?
The University has identified student success and retention as a key strategic priority.
No news there! What may be less obvious is that facilitating student success is not a
short-term enthusiasm or passing trend. It is likely to be an enduring emphasis and a
‘new normal’ in a mass higher education context characterised by increased student
diversity, wider access and varied entry pathways. Meeting these educational
challenges requires us to both broaden our conceptions of the role and responsibilities
of a ‘university educator’, and demonstrate more purposeful and collaborative
academic leadership of our Schools and degree programs. For some of us this may
feel like an uncomfortable or unwelcome prospect, and for others of us, it may be a
welcome and overdue development. Either way, the business of higher education is
changing.
WHAT HAVE WE LEARNT FROM OUR EXPERIENCE IN SEEKING TO IMPROVE
STUDENT SUCCESS AND RETENTION?
Probably the number one ‘lesson learnt’ is that it is crucial to not base our strategy on
the ‘energy of a few enthusiasts’. We have been here before and we know that ‘leaving
it to some’ almost always produces short-lived outcomes, results in staff burnout and
impedes a genuinely shared and sustainable response to students’ needs. Without
putting too fine a point on it, a mature educational system collectively stands up and
steps up! Thus, embracing collective responsibility (everyone’s business) is a critical
foundation for implementing both an effective (What works?) and sustainable (What
can we feasibly continue to do?) strategy. Achieving success in our ‘new normal’
requires us to engage with a refreshed and practical sense of collegiality.
WHAT DO WE HAVE TO DO DIFFERENTLY?
The challenge for us, both as a University and within each of our individual Schools
and degree programs, is to work in a ‘joined-up way’ to optimise the student
experience and student outcomes, and to embed this as ongoing core business. This
goal requires us to develop new and creative partnerships between academic,
administrative and professional staff. Thus, supporting student success in the present
context involves shifts in our usual strategies, skills and roles, and is genuinely
everyone’s business.
Placing the values of collegiality and partnership at the heart of the student success
and retention strategy may, at first glance, appear a bit soft-headed, or even flaky.
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Empowering local ownership and local leadership for student success
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However, this is consistent with converging evidence that the future-proofing of higher
education requires us to actively explore different ways for both staff and students to
collaborate and co-create innovative practice. In particular, the invitation is to stretch
our ideas of traditional teacher-student relationships and classroom structures and
practices, and to move away from overly individualised ‘private practice’ models of
teaching and course management (my patch) to program-level models of collective
action and mutual accountability. None of this is easy, but it is arguably necessary.
Most importantly, any strategy with a hope of even marginal success needs to be
profoundly local in its implementation. While the University can establish policy and
provide data and resources, there is a clear limit to the traction of ‘top-down’
processes, especially in distributed systems such as universities. Unless our top-down
institutional agendas, despite their agreed importance, are met with ‘bottom-up
commitment’ and ‘local knowledge,’ then this strategy will go the way of a lot of wellintentioned change and be a mile wide but just an inch deep!
Student Success and Retention Teams are a contemporary practical expression of the
values of collegiality.
WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?
Enhancing the student experience and student outcomes is a worthwhile aspiration in
its own right. However, there are a number of practical reasons that we should
consider in deciding our level of investment and contribution to this agenda.
Indeed, an early leadership task for Student Success and Retention Teams is
providing a meaningful rationale for academic colleagues as to ‘why this is worth our
time and effort’? Some ideas to consider:
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Economic benefits: The economic costs of student attrition, whatever the cause, are
significant. When a student drops-out, the cost to the University is, on average,
around $8000 per semester or around $48,000 per student over the duration of a 3
year degree. Moreover, not only is revenue lost from existing students, but
replacement costs are significant.
Academic benefits: Exiting students are usually replaced by students of lesser
academic ability or prior academic achievement, which simply serves to exacerbate
our retention problem.
Reputational benefits: A reputation for comparatively higher attrition rates is not
consistent with our aspirations of becoming a university of influence.
Social benefits: A genuine commitment to the national Widening Participation agenda
goes beyond strategies to increase aspiration and access to higher education.
Genuine participation involves enabling the success and completion of students from
diverse backgrounds.
Professional benefits: The above benefits notwithstanding, our students’ success is
an intrinsic part of our own success as professional educators.
Academic values and standards are an important aspect of any discussion about
‘doing things differently’. It is important to emphasise that supporting student success
and retention does not necessarily require us to ‘dumb down’ the curriculum.
Academic standards and student retention are not mutually exclusive agendas. It is not
only possible, but clearly desirable, to maintain academic standards and develop
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Empowering local ownership and local leadership for student success
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students to become independent learners. However, in a context of increasing student
diversity, we may have to re-think the ways we progressively scaffold students towards
success. Thus we can affirm our fundamental values, but the means we employ to
achieve them may require creative change. Thus, one of the key goals of Student
Success and Retention Teams is to better understand our students (i.e., commencing
capabilities and motivations) and to design ways of better engaging them in the
business of learning.
WHAT ARE SCHOOLS AND PROGRAMS BEING ASKED TO DO?
The University is investing significant resources in the new co-curricular role of Student
Success Advisor (SSA). SSAs are attached to each undergraduate degree program on
a specific campus and work in close collaboration with academic and administrative
staff and central University services. SSAs provide support, information, education and
advice to our students to enable them to successfully engage with university life and
study and achieve their academic and personal goals. SSAs work with both individuals
and groups of students and build student community and systematically respond to the
needs of students at risk of discontinuing their studies.
The appointment of SSAs has enabled us to reposition the First Year Advisor (FYA)
role to have a stronger focus on the first-year environment. The new role of First Year
Coordinator (FYC) has the aim of working collaboratively with the Program Convenor
to enhance curriculum to support student engagement and learning.
While both the SSA and FYC roles will make important co-curricular and curricular
contributions, revitalizing the Griffith strategy to enhance student retention will require
more than just the simple addition of resources or new roles. We also need to make
significant adjustments to our curriculum, policies, practice models and management
frameworks. One early and particularly key priority is the development of joined-up
whole-of-school or whole-of-program approaches to improving retention. Most
importantly, we need to shift from our historical delegated role strategy (i.e., someone
else’s business) to a shared strategy (i.e., everyone’s business).
While the University has identified student success and retention as a key strategic
priority, the strategy will only be meaningful and sustainable to the extent that it is
owned and implemented by staff in our schools and programs. In many ways, the
University strategy is, by necessity, a coordinated series of local strategies. Thus,
Griffith Schools and degree programs should aim to proactively implement activities
that facilitate student success in ways appropriate to their discipline and program
context. The focus is on local ownership and leadership and empowering staff to work
collaboratively towards locally meaningful goals. Thus Student Success and Retention
Teams are the appropriate primary vehicle for this strategy.
WHAT IS THE ROLE OF SSRTS?
It is evident that student success and retention, while necessarily front-loaded in
emphasis, is a whole-of-program agenda. It is increasingly recognised that risk of
student attrition occurs across the student lifecycle, but is particularly salient at points
of transition, escalation of academic challenge or study-life conflict. Students ‘get lost’
or ‘drop out’ at all stages across their degrees and needs for support and advising are
clearly apparent at points of ‘mini-transition’ (e.g., from first to second year) or
‘predictable crises’ (e.g., degree variations) across the degree lifecycle. Given that
continuing, as well as commencing, students are vulnerable to non-continuation,
effective embedded student support needs to be lifecycle informed.
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Empowering local ownership and local leadership for student success
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Core Purpose of SSRTs
Develop, implement and evaluate strategies to facilitate the success and retention of
our commencing and continuing students across the degree lifecycle.
Key Goals of SSRTs
Build a Student-Centred Success Culture Coordinate the overall first-year learning
environment to enhance program and cross-course coherence, align curricular and cocurricular elements, and develop a consistent student centred educational experience
and culture.
Create an Effective Orientation and Transition Experience Provide an evidence-based
and success-focused academic orientation and transition program which enables
commencing students to engage, learn and persist with their university studies.
Ensure Quality Curriculum Development Embed assessment and curriculum design
within and across first-year courses which purposefully enhances the transition of
commencing students and their engagement with and learning of disciplinary content,
and their confident progression to further study.
Implement Strategic Student Advising Provide a coordinated program of academic
advising to support students’ participation/attendance, performance on early
assessment, academic recovery from early under-performance on assessment and
timely and active outreach to students at-risk of disengaging or discontinuing their
studies.
Facilitate Student Progression across the Lifecycle Develop a coherent and wellsupported learning environment that supports student engagement, persistence and
progression across the degree program.
Student Success and Retention Teams are a contemporary practical expression
of the values of collegiality.
Local academic leadership is at the heart of all this!
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Empowering local ownership and local leadership for student success
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SECTION 2
How do we put SSRTs in practice?
This section provides practical and procedural information to support the establishment
and development of your SSRT. This will be of particular interest if you are involved in
sponsoring or leading an SSRT in your academic element. This section can also be
used to guide initial thinking and discussion to form or further develop your SSRT.
What are the key features of effective student success and retention teams?
Each SSRT will develop its own way of working, however the following qualities have
been found to be helpful in a number of similar exercises:
Empowered Leadership: Giving your SSRT the authority to ask difficult questions and
try things differently
Lifecycle thinking: Working to enhance the student experience and student learning,
persistence and progression across the degree lifecycle
Continuous Improvement: Working with the understanding that enhancing student
success is the ‘new normal’ and not a one-off exercise.
Partnership: Working collaboratively with a whole-of-element approach
Focused Strategy: Working with clear goals in mind
Evidence-based practice: Collecting and using data to understand and evaluate
How will we measure the impact of our SSRT?
There is a range of evidence that we can use, in both the short and longer-term, to
assess impact of our work:
Evidence of engagement Our school/program staff being actively and collaboratively
engaged in the student success strategy
Soft evidence Our students’ experience of program quality (e.g., CEQ,
Starting@Griffith reports) or course quality (e.g., SEC, Challenging Course Profiles)
Firm evidence Our students’ academic success with assessment tasks (e.g., pass
rates, non-submission rates, etc)
Hard evidence Our overall published retention rate (i.e., the percentage of our
enrolled students returning the next year) and our retention rate for sub-populations
(e.g., our low SES students, our late engager/at-risk students, our early engager/highachieving students).
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Empowering local ownership and local leadership for student success
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How do we establish an SSRT in our context?
There isn’t a single right way of establishing an SSRT, you will have to discuss what
may be appropriate to your disciplinary and program context. Some options include:
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Include your SSRT within School (L & T) Committee
Incorporate your SSRT as a sub-committee of your School (L & T) Committee
Form an SSRT around a degree program (this may be particularly appropriate
for large enrolments programs or in specific contexts (e.g., GBS) where
programs are offered across a number of Schools/Departments.
Establish a small Core Team of key roles that meets regularly and then co-opt
additional members at key times or for specific agendas.
What is the appropriate membership of our SSRT?
If you think of your SSRT as a locally-appropriate working forum for collaborative
partnership between key academic, administrative and professional staff with roles and
responsibilities for achieving student success, then some combination of the following
roles may be relevant:
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Program Convenors
Academic Managers
First Year Coordinators
Course Convenors
Student Success Advisors
Administration Officers
Students
Group L & T Professionals (Curriculum Consultant, BLA, etc)
Given that student success and retention requires strategies beyond first-year, staff
from all years of the program may be involved at various stages. Some Schools or
Programs that are actively implementing a lifecycle-based strategy may wish to
consider establishing second and third year coordinator roles.
What is the appropriate leadership of our SSRT?
The leadership of an SSRT is an important consideration. The work of this group
requires active sponsorship by the formal academic leadership of a School or
Department. The Head of School/Department needs to put their active weight behind
the purpose and values of an SSRT and signal its ongoing role in the life of the School.
While each SSRT is ultimately accountable to the relevant Dean (Learning and
Teaching), it will be operationally convened and led by a delegated senior academic
staff member. In School-based teams the SSRT leader may be a Portfolio Deputy
Head of School and in Program-based teams this leadership role may be undertaken
by the Program Director.
Establishing formal accountability of an SSRT communicates its importance and
establishing regular reporting arrangements at both the School and Group levels
reinforces this message.
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Empowering local ownership and local leadership for student success
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What resources are available for our SSRT?
SSRTs will be provided with or can access a range of centrally-collated data about the
student experience and student performance. SSRTs will also wish to complement or
extend this with locally-collected data. There are a range of reports, resources and
documents that are available, and these include:
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Data and evidence from multiple sources and levels (e.g., student surveys,
course reviews, Starting@Griffith survey, feedback from staff in key roles,
predictive analytics)
Policy and strategic plans as leverage (e.g., Griffith Retention Plan)
Good Practice frameworks (e.g., First Year Assessment Guidelines)
Students as Partners
University and Group Consultancy and Advice (e.g., Curriculum Consultant,
Academic Leader SS and Retention)
Group Academic Leadership (e.g., Dean (L&T)
How do we incentivise our SSRT?
Group and School leadership will need to consider locally-appropriate ways to signal
that this work is strategic and that those who invest their time and energy in facilitating
student success are valued.
How do we launch our SSRT?
Discuss this proposal at your next School/Program meeting and get the ball rolling! If
you have already started, discuss it again, and consider whether you are on the right
track. Sometimes our strategies ‘get tired’ and need to be refreshed!
As always, please ask for help or advice. Talk to your Dean (Learning & Teaching).
The stakes are reasonably high but these are more than matched by our collective
ingenuity and capability.
Local academic leadership is at the heart of all this!
We will be back in touch to see how you are going.
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Empowering local ownership and local leadership for student success
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