When and how we act on low engagement

If we have identified you as having low engagement at a review point, we will reach out to see how we can help support you.

BU action from the review

We will email asking you to increase your engagement and/or meet with your Personal Tutor.

What you need to do:

• Increase your engagement if you can and/or
• Contact your Personal Tutor to arrange a meeting to discuss any circumstances affecting your studies, so we can support you.

If your engagement remains low at a later review point, we will reach out again to find out what we can do to support you.

BU action from the review

We will email asking you to increase your engagement and/or arrange to speak to your Programme Leader/Level Lead.

What you need to do:

• Increase your engagement if you can and/or:
• Contact your Programme Leader/Level Lead and tell them about any circumstances affecting your studies, so that we can help you find support to help you.

If your engagement continues to be low at a later review point, we will contact you again.

BU action from the review

We will email to tell you that you must attend a mandatory meeting with your Programme Leader/Level Lead (We may also send a copy of this email by post. This will go to home address for UK students and term-time address for international students). At the meeting we will aim to agree a support plan with you to increase your engagement.

What you need to do:

• Contact your Programme Leader/Level Lead within seven calendar days to arrange a meeting. The meeting does not have to take place within seven calendar days, but you must contact them within that time.
• Attend the meeting. Even if you think you do not need any help or support, you still need to meet with us. This meeting is not optional.
• Increase your engagement if you can and take any actions agreed as part of your support plan.

We may decide to repeat Step 3 before we proceed to Step 4, if we think there is still a reasonable possibility of your engagement increasing to the required level. We might do this, for example, where we have previously agreed a support plan with you and think it's possible it would work if we agree changes to it, or there is good reason to think that you can now increase your engagement.

We will usually take Step 4 if your engagement is low a further time at a later review point and any of the following apply:

• You were asked to attend a Step 3 mandatory meeting but did not do so 
• You attended a Step 3 mandatory meeting but:  
  
  • We were not able to agree an appropriate support plan with you; or  
  • We agreed a support plan with you, but you are not following it or it is not working.

BU action from the review

We will email to warn you that we will withdraw you from your course in seven calendar days unless you take the required action (We may also send a copy of this email by post. This will go to home address for UK students and term-time address for international students). If you have not contacted us at all during the engagement review process, we will also phone you at this point to make sure you are aware of our emails.

What you need to do:

Contact us within seven calendar days:

• If you want to avoid withdrawal, you will need to agree to meet with your Programme Leader/Level Lead to create a reasonable plan to re-engage with your studies (see Step 3). The meeting does not have to take place within seven calendar days, but you must contact us within that time.
• If you think withdrawal or interrupting your studies is the right option for you, you still need to contact us so that we can support you in deciding on your next steps. You will need to consider the impact of withdrawal, including your financial position and your accommodation contract.

You can find out more information about interrupting your studies or leaving BU on our website.   

If you have not responded to the withdrawal warning (Step 4) or we have not been able to agree an effective support plan with you at Step 4, we will proceed with withdrawal.

BU action from the review

We will take the necessary steps to withdraw you. This means that you are no longer enrolled as a BU student. We will email you to confirm that you have been withdrawn from BU (We may also send a copy of this email by post. This will go to home address for UK students and term-time address for international students).

What you need to do:

The email we send will provide information about the next steps you will need to take after withdrawal. We suggest you take advice from the SUBU Advice service ([email protected]) on how withdrawal will affect you, for example your financial situation and accommodation contract.

The aim of the meeting is to listen to you - so that we can understand why your engagement is low, including any particular difficulties you are facing. We can work with you to agree a support plan. This is not about telling you off or you being in trouble: the meeting is mandatory because continuing low engagement can be a sign that you need support and it could be seriously impacting your ability to make academic progress. The aim of the meeting is to support you.

Any support plan should be appropriate for you and your circumstances. If you are ready to start attending more regularly after a period of low attendance and do not want or need specific support, then you could just agree to increase your attendance. For another student the plan might involve signposting to relevant support teams or agreement that you will access academic support with a particular part of your course. Your Programme Leader/Level Lead will send you a brief follow-up email after the meeting which will note the key actions that you agreed in the meeting.

At BU we use information about your attendance in a number of ways:

• To support you and your learning experience:
  
  • Your Programme Team will use attendance data and other engagement data in the engagement review process. This is the attendance data collected through the Jisc system, along with other information we record about whether you have missed any mandatory requirement (coursework submission, exam or mandatory timetabled session). We use a BU system called "Engage" to view this data, record a brief summary of information you provide about circumstances affecting your engagement and send and store communications we send you as part of the engagement review process.
  • Your Personal Tutor and your Programme Team will also have access to attendance and engagement data on the Jisc Learning Analytics system. This also contains the attendance data collected through the Jisc system along with data about your logins to Brightspace and some information about assessment outcomes. They may refer to this data when they talk to you about your academic progress and learning experience. Along with other information about your engagement and progress, it may help identify the support you need.
• To check you are meeting legal and regulatory requirements on engagement with your course and support you in meeting those requirements: If you are on a professional registration or an apprenticeship course, or if you have a Student Visa, your attendance data will be used within the engagement review process to ensure you're meeting any legal or regulatory requirements that apply to you. You need to do this so that you can complete your studies and obtain your degree.
• To develop our understanding of student experience at BU and consider how we can improve this. This includes analysing patterns of attendance and engagement so we can consider what we can do to make it easier for students to engage and access the right support.

If we talk to you about your attendance, our first aim will always be to support you and help you re-engage with your studies.

The use of your data will comply with relevant university policies and procedures, in alignment with legal data protection (GDPR) requirements as stated in the Student Privacy Notice. It is held within BU IT systems, protected by our cyber security measures.  

The engagement review process included on this webpage is a guide only. Depending on your circumstances, we may miss or repeat steps. In particular:

• We will usually skip Step 2 for students with 0% or very low attendance at two consecutive review points, to ensure we can appropriately check on your welfare and, for student visa holders, for immigration compliance purposes.
• We will repeat steps in the process where we consider this may support your re-engagement with your studies – for example, we may repeat Step 3 so we can review and amend a support plan.
• Review points are more frequent for student visa holders, for immigration compliance purposes.

You must log your attendance at every timetabled session by checking-in to our attendance system. You will also be asked to check-in at some supervision sessions on project or dissertation units which do not include many timetabled sessions. You will also need to tell us about any significant absence (more than seven days).

You can find more information and instructions about how to log your attendance on the BU website. 

If you have difficulty checking-in, please log this with our IT service.

We will always aim to support you to engage and re-engage and help address barriers to your engagement. We will help you to put appropriate support in place so that you can make reasonable academic progress and comply with legal and regulatory requirements. But if you are not able to meet these requirements even with reasonable support in place, we may need to discuss options, such as interrupting your studies or withdrawing you from your course. This may be in your interests so that you are not incurring more debt or financial liability and experiencing stress without gaining value from your university experience.

If we contact you about low engagement the most important thing is for you to talk to us and tell us about your circumstances: we can support you in making the best decision for you about your studies. The engagement review process ensures that you will have several opportunities to tell us about your circumstances before we withdraw you.

This paragraph does not apply to student visa holders, students on apprenticeships and students on professional registration courses: We will not necessarily withdraw you only on the basis of low engagement as long as:

• You are engaging with your course in other ways (using course materials and completing assessments)
• You are making reasonable academic progress
• You have responded to the engagement review process (including attending the mandatory meeting at Step 3) and are responding to communications from your Programme Team, so that we understand your circumstances; and
• We are able to agree an appropriate support plan, to ensure that we can keep working with you to support your attendance as much as possible and manage the impact of non-attendance, and that you maintain regular contact with your Programme Team.

Ongoing low attendance is still a cause for concern in these circumstances as you will be missing out on the wider benefits of attendance and your ability to maintain academic progress without regular attendance may change as you progress to different units and higher levels of your studies.  

At BU we aim to support all our students and to provide an accessible and supportive environment.   

If a disability or condition is affecting your attendance it’s important that you tell us about your circumstances, so that we can manage the engagement review process appropriately and work with you to ensure the right support is in place to support your attendance and wider engagement with your studies. We will make reasonable adjustments to our processes to take account of disabilities and long-term conditions where you tell us about them.

Find out more about managing absences from university on the BU webpage.

You need to attend timetabled sessions regularly and must attend mandatory sessions for your course. However we appreciate that there are sometimes circumstances that impact your ability to attend, such as illness, bereavement or family circumstances.

It is important that you tell us about periods of absence from university, this is so we can put support in place for you (if necessary) and meet any legal and regulatory requirements for your course. What you need to do will vary depending on your situation and chosen course of study. Find out what you need to do on our managing absences from university webpage.

What you need to do will vary depending on your situation and chosen course of study. Find out what you need to do on our managing absences from university webpage.

Your Programme Team is here to support you in engaging with your course and managing your studies. The Team includes:

• Your Programme Leader (sometimes referred to as PL, you may also have a Level Lead/Year Leader/Level Co-Ordinator): Member(s) of the teaching team who co-ordinate the delivery and organisation of your course and can provide information and advice on course requirements and academic questions.
• Your Programme Support Officers (PSO): Staff who are responsible for supporting your course and the students on the course. They are your point of contact for information on assessment processes, absences and guidance when circumstances are affecting your studies.

You can find out who the Programme Team is for your course on your programme page on Brightspace.

Your Programme Team regularly reviews your academic engagement by looking at your attendance and other engagement information. If they are concerned about your engagement, they will contact you and ask you to speak to them or your Personal Tutor about support and increasing your engagement.

The teaching staff on each unit will be able to answer questions about the content of individual units, assessment requirements and assessment feedback. You can also find out more about the academic support teams available to help you on the BU website.