Empowering tertiary level students to solve their own study-related problems to improve study performance

Abstract

PurposeStudents’ progressing to tertiary (undergrad or higher) level education often faces problems due to the change in the educational settings that may directly or indirectly affect their studies and interim results. In addition, they may suffer from low self-esteem, which in turn may result from another set of issues such as negative peers, past poor results, unable to get into a school of choice and so on. Those who have to live away from home to attend a university could have their own set of problems. To provide support many universities have counseling offices to help the students tackle their problems. The counseling officers often give repeated appointments in an attempt to help solve these problems. At the university where the research was conducted, more than 75 percent of the students come from a rural background. These are students who, for the purposes of acquiring their tertiary-level education, have had to move to the city, away from their family. These students are known to have problems such as adjusting to urban life, missing home, managing all household chores by themselves, even a culture shock given the nature of urban life and so on, all of which may affect their studies. Unfortunately, the university under study does not employ a student counselor to look after students coming from rural areas. Therefore, to support such students it was thought that a peer counseling session might help the students help themselves.Design/methodology/approachA workshop using a collaborative approach to help students solve their own problems was designed and conducted. From three different departments, 78 students with a low Cumulative Grade Point Average (CGPA < 2.50 out of 4.0) participated in the problem-solving workshop. The students were guided in a collaborative environment where individual problems were first identified anonymously by working in pairs and possible solutions were presented by the students themselves by working in collaborative groups.FindingsThe paper proposes a performance-improving model to reduce the dropout rate and ensure graduation with a better CGPA. After six semesters of the intervention, the performance of the participating students was compared against the students with similar profile who did not attend the workshop. The perception of effectiveness of the collaborative guidance model was also measured by taking feedback from students.Research limitations/implicationsThe collaborative approach seems to benefit students by empowering them to think on their own to solve study-related problems by themselves. To become a standardized procedure, however, more rigorous testing across a greater cross section and number of subjects would be helpful. This paper provides an initial study of the methodology for further study and use.Originality/valueAs the collaborative approach purely involves peers, it benefits students by empowering them to solve study-related problems by themselves and indirectly help self-esteem development.

Dropout in Rural Higher Education: A Systematic Review

“…That said, Meisalo et al (2002) found in a rural population in Finland that the complexity of programming course content in an engineering faculty, combined with problems of student comprehension, led to the dropout of part of the student population in the first year of training. Similarly, Nishat et al (2020) found that class difficulty expressed in content is often one of the reasons why rural students drop out.…”

“…In relation to personal obligations represented in domestic and household chores, unemployed adults tend to drop out due to the need to provide basic goods and services to their houses, leading them to limit their spending to cover these needs, reducing or eliminating investments in education, so that if the chief member of the family or any of his relatives is the one who studies, he has to drop out, due to the economic insecurity that exists in rural areas (Nishat et al, 2020;De Hart and Venter, 2013). In the case of the work obligations of rural students, research generally agrees that the hours allocated to work compete with study hours.…”

“…Regarding other variables, Ramírez et al (2020) identified that the type of family can influence the non-continuation of the educational process. Students with single-parent or extended nuclear families (parents, siblings, grandparents and aunts and uncles who live together in the same house) have a greater risk of not concluding their educational process, as explained in the case of those students with work and personal obligations (Nishat et al, 2020) and in the case of the latter to sources of pressure and stress derived from the family environment (Pillay and Ngcobo, 2010). The death of family members or close relatives as an explanatory variable of dropout is related as a source of stress which, in conjunction with other psychological problems of the student, leads him/her to not complete the training process (Pillay and Ngcobo, 2010).…”

“…However, Castleman and Meyer (2020) noted that students in rural areas tend to enrol for fewer academic credits, which represents a lower number of courses taken per semester, resulting in a lower probability of timely graduation. On the other hand, Nishat et al (2020) recognise that GPA can be positively influenced by P&GO when the student actively participates in additional tutoring and other services provided by these types of programmes within HEIs.…”

“…In relation to other variables, the selection of the training programme has a direct impact on rural student desertion, given that a poor choice results in a lack of motivation to continue their training process, leading them to drop out of the programme (Pillay and Ngcobo, 2010;Nishat et al, 2020). This is due to a lack of information prior to the selection of the academic programme or family pressures (Pillay and Ngcobo, 2010).…”