Better student outcomes at University of Portsmouth – how data informed targeted intervention can support student success

Learning Developers are increasingly asked to conduct targeted work with certain student groups and areas of academic provision to respond to an outcomes and target-focused English higher education sector. This paper presentation offered an example of practice from the University of Portsmouth Students’ Union (UPSU) and University of Portsmouth (UoP), where a funded pilot to better support student outcomes has run since 2022, to address the above challenges. This substantial investment of increased staffing, student-staffing and non-staffing resources in UPSU, has led to supporting targeted solutions to improve student outcomes, in partnership with course teams and students. This project offers an example of a cross-university enhancement project for Learning Development teams and shared practice in approaching timely and targeted intervention.

Presenting as a cross university team, the session outlined how the university is working collaboratively between different services and teams to better support student success through curriculum enhancement consultancy. The team shared recommendations to the Learning Development community, introducing Portsmouth’s timely response framework to support future targeted response activities when working collaboratively across a university. In the pressured context of English Higher Education Regulation from the Office for Students, recently produced national student outcomes benchmarks, by programme and by university (B3 Measures see OfS 2022a and 22b), have threatened fines for universities where there are lower metrics in retention, graduate outcomes and student satisfaction (for context see Advance HE Governance Alert 2022). It is therefore critical for timely intervention, with data sources feeding quickly into actionable staffing resources in time for relevant intervention, which will increasingly include the work of Learning Developers. Therefore, this presentation highlighted Portsmouth’s story from the Student Outcomes Project and disseminated a framework for data-informed intervention to support universities during a time of accountability and emphasis on student success.