The Dropout Report - Latest Comments

Re: Conclusion of community engagement: The Student dropouts

Vinnie Cook — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 19:04:51 -0000

*None* instead of non, I can assure that's sleepiness from hard investigating!

Re: Student Services: ‘students know we’re here’

Paul Bradshaw — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 14:18:23 -0000

Again, cut the build up and tell us in par 1 what the reaction was, e.g. "Student services say X in response to Y" before expanding on that in further pars - don't ask the user to wade through the whole response (although you can link to the full statement)

Re: Conclusion of community engagement: The Student dropouts

Paul Bradshaw — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 14:17:00 -0000

Nicely done - but take yourself out of the intro to make it snappier, and tighten some language such as "none existent" (should be non existent) and "students overwhelming" (should be overwhelmingly).

Re: Startling percentage of Birmingham City University students unaware of dropout services

Taishamccoy — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 09:35:59 -0000

Our other post is now up from the results from the University of Birmingham. Check it out :)

Re: Startling percentage of Birmingham City University students unaware of dropout services

Paul Bradshaw — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 11:22:10 -0000

Again, avoid starting by telling us about process. Instead start with your 'new information', which here is '89% of students are not aware of...'

Don't underline text unless it's a link. Use bold or italics to emphasise passages. Nice use of subheads - try to split pars more ruthlessly too. Don't assume we know what BCU is in the headline - use the full title.

PS: Use your full names, byline at the top 'by Vinnie Cook with Taisha McCoy"

Re: Should it be easier to change university?

Paul Bradshaw — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 04:14:04 -0000

Really nice roundup. Note that the Aston link is for international students - you need to check if the advice is different for UK students. I also wonder if you can present a summary at the top, like a tick list of where each institution stands? You might also get some context from an academic as to why it isn't so easy - or indicate that that's your next step (as an academic myself, I could tell you that courses are designed to assume that students have learned particular skills in previous years so that they don't have to be re-taught. Accepting students from anywhere would cause problems in slowing down the learning of the class as a whole, and/or increasing the likelihood of that student failing through lack of core skills/knowledge)

Re: Interview With A Coventry University Dropout

Paul Bradshaw — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 14:03:06 -0000

Good to see you asking some specific questions, Vinnie - you need to focus on factual ones rather than emotive ones - i.e. "What did you do? What did they do?" rather than "What do you feel/think?" Also listen to the answers and push for more detail. For example: "the tutors didn’t really get to know people individually " - ask for more detail on that. How often did she meet them? In what context? What were her responsibilities and how were they communicated to her?

As always, don't start your piece by describing what *you* did - we're interested in her, so start with summarising the most relevant facts about her: "Courtny dropped out of university after..."

Also, we need the full name of sources.

Re: BCU – Reasons for students dropping out of university

Paul Bradshaw — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 13:57:56 -0000

Nice use of bullet lists but the colour only confuses the user. Don't link "click here" - link the phrase that relates to what you're linking to, e.g. 'student services'. We don't know who "Charlee" is - don't assume we're regular users of the site. Most users will only see one page - any page.

Re: HE institutions and funding agencies standards conflict

Paul Bradshaw — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 13:51:24 -0000

Watch for headline typos - ouch! Also try to split pars more - one par per point if possible. And link to the source of each fact when you mention it (e.g. 'According to'; 'having to pay back'; etc.)

Re: The Dropout Report Introduction

Vinnie Cook — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 12:38:56 -0000

Community Manager *right people*