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Improving HBO Student Retention by Fostering Belonging 

Led strategy and execution of end-to-end UX research and service design to understand and address high dropout rates among MBO students transitioning to HBO education. Through qualitative research, co-creation, and prototyping, we developed an intervention to foster student belonging and well-being; now being scaled regionally and nationally by the client.

Feedback from colleagues:

Result:

Deep dive: Step by step

We started our process with our first sprint in which we had the following goals:

• Get a better understanding of the Dutch educational system and the trajectory of the dutch / migrant students who come to the Netherlands (kindergarten => university)
• Understand existing explanations of challenges experienced by students during this transition
• Define stakeholders
• Create a strategy for interacting with stakeholders / students

As a team, we all did desk research on the system and spoke to Dutch students, then made a presentation that summed up our understanding of the same. We realised the rigid nature of the system and the fact that this transition is systemic and rooted in the CITO tests which defines students’ ease of access to higher education and perspection of themselves.


In order to understanding existing explanations of student challenges in the transition, we studied the literature. I introduced the practice of affinity mapping to the team and facilitated the same, through which we gained actionable insights organized along the themes:

•  Students feel less than and left out 
  
• Meritocratic education system as a whole

• Strong role of family
  
• Strong role of teachers
  
• HBO ways of working
  
• Customization of study paths from a young age (CITO test).

We also made a video to creatively bring to life this intial understanding of MBO students:

Next, I took the initiative to introduce design research methods to the team through the following interactive presentation. I did this to prepare us to plan and conduct research in the coming days. 


We then dove into emailing and scheduling interviews with non-student stakeholders. We interacted with 1 teacher, 1 student councillor, 2 MBO>HBO research experts and 1 faculty Dean. I led the recruitment, interview guide creation and conducting of all the interviews. 

Through interactions with the stakeholders, we discovered the following key needs:

• HBO students with an MBO background need a safe and connected space at the university.
• MBO-graduates should be able to learn new soft and hard skills.
  
• MBO-graduates should be able to explore their existing talents and continue developing them in the future.
  
• Need Support for MBO-graduates in building better relationships with themselves, fellow students and teachers.
  
• MBO-graduates should know that there is no rush to do HBO. What are their long term goals? It can be different for everyone.
  
• HBO administration and teachers expect the students to be responsible and independent enough to identify their issues and reach out to solve them.

MBO-graduate students, of course were an essential audience to reach out to. However, we found it extremely difficult to reach them through remote digital media (due to COVID-19, we didn’t have another choice) and the ones we did manage to reach out to remotely did not want to speak about this experience since it made them feel sensitive and vulnerable.

Due to this, I had the idea to conduct analogous research at this stage. Our fellow trainees at Digital Society School were also going through a transition from their past background to DSS. Together we ideated towards this and finally created an online tool through which we asked DSS trainees questions about how they experienced transitions between different educational contexts.


 
They could respond to the questions via audio recordings. In this way, we managed to collect analogous audio story insights.  However, we had to be aware of the fact that these insights are merely analoguos and cannot be used by themselves.

(Insights can be found here https://www.notion.so/DSS-student-experiences-transitioning-into-the-program-59290a376b294096b3bac779492176f0)

Using these audio story insights, as well as our understanding of students until now, I facilitated a workshop with our team to create 5 diverse persona profiles. 




Based on these personas and the fact that the University was opening post-corona, we ideated towards what we can do within the limited measures in order to enagage with real MBO>HBO students (for each above persona) regarding their transition. I planned and facilitated this ideation session inspired by the Lotus Blossom brainstorming tool.



I had an idea to create a physical booth where students exchange a story with us for a goodie (a playlist for examplle). Together, we developed this into a succesful concept. We physically showed up at the HvA building and interacted with students in the format of a booth. We provided them with incentives such as candy, cola and playlists in return for them answering certain questions for us.


This worked really well and made clear to us that  students are willing to open up and speak about this transition in a physical space. We learnt that developing a mainly digital concept for this project wouldn’t be ideal. Hence, going forward we focused on developing a majorly physical, tangible concept.

While interacting with students through this booth, we realised that they need a space where they can exchange their stories and be heard in regards to their education experience. This validated our design brief as well as the insights gained previously from non-student stakeholder interactions, analogous research and the literature.

We also learnt that the best way to engage students was through in-person social interaction in a playful and informal format in order to create a dialogue. This format seemed to be one that students missed and gravitated towards. Hence, we chose to move forward with this direction

Final opportunity statement: How might we engage MBO>HBO students at FDMCI, HvA to converse about their educational experiences in a safe space so that they can reflect on their current and long term goals, support themselves, the school and other students  and feel a sense of belonging?

We then ideated based on this statement. We thought of multiple different ideas : card game, physical games, digital community spaces etc. and finally made a preliminary selection based on dot voting, and final selection based on the Pugh’s matrix (after doing low fidelity testing with students). Parameters were decided based on the opportunity statement.

The final concept:

The final outcome was ‘Ask. Listen.’ - a card game that encourages personal storytelling and radical empathy around transitions in the student experience by prompting current-HBO students to reflect on the past, present and future of their education.

The card set contains questions both zooming into the MBO to HBO transition, as well as zooming out  to education in general - this is because asking questions only about MBO to HBO would single out those students and put them in an uncomfortable situation. Further, asking zoomed out questions enables us to touch on the systemic context and struggles related to this transition.

The card set also contains some wildcards which include questions that students can draw or write their responses to. This serves as a creative ice breaker that makes students confront their biases, their education and their life in a creative way; thereby bringing their latent emotions, hopes and needs to the forefront.

This card set can be used as an independent card deck and in the format of a booth. The independent deck can be placed in HvA locations and played amongst 2-5 students. To play, one can read out the questions on the cards from each timeframe and share responses with their peers.

The booth containing the card game would be used at the beginning and end of the first 100 days of first year students. It can be facilitated by the introduction committee or the study association at FDMCI, HvA. The booth format during the first 100 days would make engagement more active and help new students connect with each other and transition better into their new HBO education.

In the booth, students can respond to all the cards with one other student and the facilitator can welcome and guide them. The drawn and written wildcard responses would be permanently placed at the HvA. The facilitator would also post them on Ask.Listen.'s Instagram account that works as a repository for documenting reflections of students.

My role at this stage was creating the service design, planning the co-creation sessions/testing and communicating directions to the product designer, the video producer and marketeer. 

Service Design:

The service design was created and iterated multiple times paralelly to testing. The final service design deliverables consist of:

• A service blueprint
  
• Details of who would facilitate the booth, when where and how
  
• A service script to detail out employee (i.e. facilitator) behaviour and experience
  
• Guidelines for the employee (i.e. facilitator)  regarding instagram posts and captions
  

Below is the 4 stage service bleuprint for the Ask. Listen. booth:

The service design script and roadmap (created for the project handover) can be found here: https://www.notion.so/Service-design-5a7423b4ba9f4f07b60a7f05d313b4f0

The case for Ask. Listen.:

Ask. Listen. was developed in an iterative fashion through 3 rounds of testing and co-creation with students.  In every lo-fi testing around, we observed students play the game (both formats) and identified where they struggled/were confused and marked the pain points on the journey map. After every testing, we co-created with students. Together, we ideated towards better questions to ask, ways of implementing the game, ways of playing the game etc.

We did prototyping testing of the booth and the card game through roleplay.

KPI's for Ask. Listen.:

• How many students visit and complete the game at the booth? → is it attracting audience? = 100%
  
• Is there a higher rate of students getting involved in the faculty programmes that support MBO>HBO transitions? → is it mobilising students to help each other? = calculate long term
  
• How many students follow the Instagram and like/comment on the posts? → is it creating a community? = 20%. Also calculate long term. 
  
• What is the drop out rate over the years when Ask. Listen. gets implemented? → is it reducing the drop out rate? = measure long term

• NPS: Ask students if they would recommend this to their friend = 80% (20 students. 18 promoters. 2 detractors . 10% detractors. 90% promoters. = 80% NPS)
  

• Could have also calculated CSAT by asking students to enter a mood emoji before and after entering the booth.
  

In the final 4th round of testing, we found that the concept is useful to students and achieves the needs identified in the following ways:

• By sharing responses to the questions asked in this card set, we aim to create a safe and connected space to have these conversations.

• We have designed the questions in such a way that students can explore their existing talents and what they bring to the table in their current education, and what more they can learn.

• By exchanging stories about their past, present and future with peers, students can build better relationships with others and also understand themselves better.

• By articulating what their past and present is and what the future could hold, students can better articulate their long term goals and whether their current choices are best

Previous research indicates that exchanging stories and having conversations helps with loneliness, understanding oneself and one's situation better. Group discussion of stories has the potential to be transformative - of the group's culture, the individual identities of participants within it and therefore, ultimately, of practices within the schools.

When people start to narrate their own stories, new insights are publicized. The practice of open self-disclosure can give students agency over their personal narratives and create an open group culture, in which new possibilities and practices might be publicized, without fear of personal rejection. (Pauline James, 1996).

Limitations and future roadmap:

We kept the scope of the project mainly limited to creating interactions between students since this topic seemed to be a taboo between them and through testing and co-creation with students, we saw that this actually helped them.

We realized that involving HvA staff into the scope at this phase of the project would have limited the openness with which students converse about this topic. Involving them can be a potential next step so that they can know what the student perspective is and then help them but first students need to be open about this topic and tap into their own feelings about it: hence we went with the direction that we did with Ask. Listen. 

We also faced a limitation of time due to which it wasn’t possible to be in touch with all the desired HvA non-student stakeholders and involve them as much as we’d need to in the process. It was also quite difficult to get in touch and establish close contact with these stakeholders and this seemed to be a problem in and of itself. It indicated that the HvA system is somewhat fragmented. This reconnects to our challenge of MBO students struggling in their transition to HBO because if they need to reach out for support, this fragmentation can be a big barrier.

Future recommendation 1: Use the game in MBO schools

Ask. Listen. can be extended for use in MBO schools (e.g. Mediacollege, Amsterdam) at the end of the year for students who are finishing up MBO and deciding what to do next. Right now, the concept only addresses the 'end' of the transition, but how students are being prepped for the transition to HBO while they are still in MBO is a huge blind spot for us - we have very little information about it. It would help students and staff to play the game / implement the booth already at MBOs, for that would give them, MBO students  and us insight into possible obstacles during the transition. This idea was co-created with an MBO student who is going to make the transition to HBO.

MBO students should be told about it beforehand by the MBO school administration. Students should be clearly told the advantage of participating in this activity - e.g. they will get extra info about HvA that they won't get anywhere else. It could be made mandatory as well, to make sure that MBO students will attend.

> Who could organise and facilitate this activity?

• 2nd/3rd year students from the FDMCI at HvA who have done an MBO before. They could be from student associations like Mimagine.
• Administration from the FDMCI at HvA who have been involved with the MBO>HBO transition can oversee this if needed.

> What would the activity be?

• This activity would use another version of the Past-Present-Future card set. Questions for this second card set have already been made and translated to Dutch.

• 5 tables are placed around a hall in the MBO school.
• Each table has the deck with Past-Present-Future cards and Wildcards mixed into each of these. Each table has an HBO student and an MBO student.
• They pick one card up from each deck and share their response to it with each other.
• Then each MBO student moves to a new table (with a new HBO student) and repeats.
• This goes on till every MBO student has been to all tables.

Future recommendation 2: Play the game between HvA students and administration

It can be extended to be played between students and administration from HvA, e.g.: the study councillors, teachers, mentors and Deans. This can help the administration understand what students need and create an urgency around the transition - something that’s missing now. Further, it will enable the administration to take steps that will actually help transitioning students.

Future recommendation 3: Implement Ask. Listen. through other parts of HvA, like the Diversity Hub

When we did our 4th round of testing the final iteration of Ask. Listen., the Diversity Hub from HvA showed interest in implementing the booth as a part of their events. They found it to be very impactful and useful. In the future, Ask. Listen. can be partnered up with such parts of the HvA like the Diversity Hub and implemented through them. It is very easily scalable and one just has to come up with new questions in Past, Present, Future format. E.g.: add questions about student experiences with diversity and inclusion in the HvA. In this manner, many versions of Ask. Listen. can be produced.

Future recommendation 4: Explore the possibility of creating a digital version of the Ask. Listen cardgame

During our final presentation at the showcase, one of the members in the audience suggested that it might be helpful to generate a digital version of the card game, besides a physical version. This would be an addition to, not a replacement of the physical prototype: our test phase indicated that face-to-face interaction is still most effective. However, having an additional digital version could keep the conversation among students more alive.

Stakeholder reactions:

Our client, HvA, was elated with the outcome and  are now planning to scale it regionally and nationally. Further, people outside of our direct clients at HvA also showed interest in implementing Ask.Listen. when they stumbled into it during our testing sessions.

︎ If you want to enquire about a detailed report of this project, click here to drop me an email.

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