Teaching and learning factors in engineering noncompletion: a grounded approach

In the past decade there has been a dramatic growth in UK student numbers, with students from nontraditional and under-represented groups encouraged to participate in higher education. However, levels of noncompletion, particularly in those Institutions that have widened their access have also been increasing. Higher Educational Institutions have introduced strategies in an effort to cope with student noncompletion. Unfortunately, there are no effective mechanisms for measuring the success of these strategies. Current models of noncompletion offer little in the way of explanation, and little justification for the strategies used to reduce noncompletion. What is required is some form of model from which predictive explanations of noncompletion can be derived, and which will aid and respond to the current cohort of students. It is argued that noncompletion, like the education environment from which it derives must be viewed as a set of complex and time variant processes. And in trying to understand the reasons behind noncompletion, consideration must be given to discovering the underlying nature of an institution´s teaching and learning environment. It is from this perspective that a preliminary model of noncompletion has been developed. This model is based on the Technology Faculty of the Southampton Institute, UK.