L Au R A N A I S M I T H

Using text messaging to support administrative communication in higher education

Keywords: administration, mobile lear ning, mobile

Using text messaging to support administrative communication in higher education

Introduction

Mobile phone use in higher education

Mobile phones are nearly ubiquitous amongst young adults in the United Kingdom. Results from the Oftel Residential Survey indicate that 88 per cent of respondents between the ages of 15 and 34 owned or used a mobile phone in February 2003, up from 83 per cent in 2001 (Office for National Statistics, 2006).A survey conducted during the same month at the [START_REF] University | Mobile Communications Survey[END_REF] found that 96 per cent of student respondents owned a mobile phone and 86 per cent had previous used the short message service (SMS), or text messaging as it is popularly known. Similar surveys conducted in the UK [START_REF] Griffiths | U R L8 4 ur exam: ) -Students Opinions Towards Receiving Timely Information via SMS[END_REF], Norway [START_REF] Divitini | Improving Communication through Mobile Technologies: Which Possibilities?[END_REF] and Japan [START_REF] Dias | Cell Phones in the Classroom: Boon or Bane?[END_REF][START_REF] Thornton | Using Mobile Phones in Education[END_REF]) confirm these findings of widespread use of mobile phones amongst young people in higher education.

SMS started off as a by-product of the mobile phone industry, and its rise in popularity surprised both technologists and sociologists [START_REF] Faulkner | When Fingers do the Talking: A Study of Text Messaging[END_REF]. SMS is now hugely popular, with a reported 3.2 billion text messages being sent in the UK during March 2006alone (Text.it, 2006). In a study of 565 users, [START_REF] Faulkner | When Fingers do the Talking: A Study of Text Messaging[END_REF] found that text messaging was used for a wide variety of activities and that it was even a preferred means of communication for some individuals. [START_REF] Harley | The Role of SMS Text Messaging in Supporting Transition to University[END_REF] discusses the use of text messaging as a means of maintaining social support networks. In a study of the use of text messaging and email for community development between co-located students on an Interactive Systems course, [START_REF] Longmate | A Comparison of Text Messaging and Email Support for Digital Communities: A Case Study[END_REF] found that SMS was primarily used in an immediate manner to determine availability. It was more interactive than email, with many messages relating to previous conversations or meetings. The usage between students was both expressive (e.g. jokes, questions like 'how are you') and instrumental (e.g. co-ordinating group work) and served to consolidate their relationships.

Institutional provision of text messaging

There is wide scope for the institutional provision of text messaging in higher education. [START_REF] Garner | An Evaluation of the Implementation of a Short Message System (SMS) to Support Undergraduate Student Learning[END_REF] propose that 'SMS can be used to interact with people and influence their actions and understandings of situations ' (2002: 16). Previously suggested uses of text messaging in higher education include: providing support, motivation and continuity; alerts and reminders (e.g. timetable changes, library loans); and delivering learning content and revision tips [START_REF] Anderson | Mobile and PDA Technologies and their Future Use in Education[END_REF][START_REF] Naismith | Literature Review in Mobile Technologies and Learning[END_REF][START_REF] Traxler | Case Studies: Introduction and Overview[END_REF]. Previous trials have demonstrated that institutionally provided text messages can promote interactivity [START_REF] Stone | ITZ GD 2 TXT -How to Use SMS Effectively in m-learning[END_REF][START_REF] Markett | Using Short Message Service to Encourage Interactivity in the Classroom[END_REF] and that students welcome text messages that are perceived as timely, appropriate and personalized [START_REF] Garner | An Evaluation of the Implementation of a Short Message System (SMS) to Support Undergraduate Student Learning[END_REF]. [START_REF] Garner | An Evaluation of the Implementation of a Short Message System (SMS) to Support Undergraduate Student Learning[END_REF] also suggest that text messaging may promote involvement in a community of learners, thus encouraging the development of independent learners and reducing feelings of isolation through promoting community. [START_REF] Harley | The Role of SMS Text Messaging in Supporting Transition to University[END_REF] promotes the use of text messaging as a way to ease the transition into university life for first year students and also states that text messages should be used to prompt face-to-face and personal communications [START_REF] Harley | Integrating Mobile Communications into the Workings of a University to Aid Student Retention[END_REF]. [START_REF] Scanlon | Activity Theory and Higher Education: Evaluating Learning Technologies[END_REF] suggest that activity theory can form the basis for evaluating learning technology in higher education. Prior to reaching the evaluation stage, however, activity theory can also provide insight into how a text messaging service can be effectively integrated into the student and staff experience. Activity theory is based on the premise that in order to accomplish a desired outcome, a subject works on an object by employing tools. For example, a student (the subject) may be working on an essay (the object). She may employ a variety of tools, including reference materials on the topic of the essay, guidance notes from the tutor as to the expected format, pen and paper for jotting down notes and a word processing program for preparing the final text. The desired outcome may include both obtaining a passing grade and increasing her subject knowledge.

Integrating text messaging effectively

In the extended activity theory developed by [START_REF] Engeström | Learning by Expanding: An Activity Theoretical Approach to Developmental Research[END_REF], the notion of community is introduced as the group who shares the same object. Rules mediate between subject and community and the division of labour mediates between object and community. External influences may change any of these activity components, causing imbalances, or contradictions, between them. Contradictions may be manifested as 'problems, ruptures, breakdowns, clashes' (Kuutti, 1996: 34). Taking the essay example further, the community can be viewed as the students, tutors and support staff who are involved in some way with composing or assessing the essay. The student would be expected to follow certain university policies and procedures when writing the essay, such as avoiding plagiarism (the rules). The division of labour would detail the assessment procedure for the essay. For example, the essay may have to be peer reviewed and revised before it is submitted to the tutor. If the student was required to submit her essay online, a possible contradiction might be the failure of the online submission system.This contradiction could be resolved by submitting a paper copy of the essay to the programme secretary.

According to [START_REF] Sharples | The Student Learning Organiser[END_REF], 'students are embedded in complex activity systems within the university and beyond ' (2005: 139). In order to obtain the outcome of gaining a degree, they use a variety of tools to mediate the organization of their studies and 'participate in many overlapping communities with different rules and divisions of labour ' (2005: 139). It is thus necessary to view the use of text messaging in the context of other communication sent by the institution. Students should be able to set their own rules about what information they receive, as mobile phones are personal tools [START_REF] Divitini | Improving Communication through Mobile Technologies: Which Possibilities?[END_REF]. Text messages are also associated with personal contact and, as such, 'careful consideration needs to be given to the human tone of the messages' (Stone and Briggs, 2003: 13). Excessive or unnecessary text messages may lead to a student perception of being monitored [START_REF] Garner | An Evaluation of the Implementation of a Short Message System (SMS) to Support Undergraduate Student Learning[END_REF], which may lead to 'spam-style deletion' [START_REF] Griffiths | U R L8 4 ur exam: ) -Students Opinions Towards Receiving Timely Information via SMS[END_REF].

From the institutional perspective, [START_REF] Scanlon | Activity Theory and Higher Education: Evaluating Learning Technologies[END_REF] point to a general contradiction in higher education of the 'student as a person to be educated versus student as source of revenue and profit ' (2005: 433). Text messaging costs more than other methods of communication that are already provided by the institution (e.g. email), but has also been suggested as a means to address issues of student retention and satisfaction [START_REF] Garner | An Evaluation of the Implementation of a Short Message System (SMS) to Support Undergraduate Student Learning[END_REF][START_REF] Riordan | Supporting Computing Students at Risk using Blended Technologies[END_REF][START_REF] Stone | Blended Learning, Mobility and Retention: Supporting First-year University Students with Appropriate Technology[END_REF].

There are also contradictions in the tools used to send text messages. Previous implementations have required staff members to learn a new interface (see, for example, [START_REF] Mohammad | A Short Message Service for Campus Wide Information Delivery[END_REF][START_REF] Harley | Integrating Mobile Communications into the Workings of a University to Aid Student Retention[END_REF]. [START_REF] Griffiths | Campus-wide Implementation of SMS Text Services within a Blackboard VLE[END_REF] integrated a text messaging service with a virtual learning environment (VLE) such that a text message could be sent in a similar way to sending an email.This implementation, however, introduced a different contradiction, as staff members now had to make an active decision about whether they wanted to send a particular message by email or by text.

Aim

The aim of this study was to investigate how a text messaging service could be better integrated within current staff and student activity systems as a means of providing administrative communication. In the context of this study, administrative communication includes notices of room changes and cancellations, notices of relevant lectures or other on-campus activities, details of assignment submission procedures and attendance matters.

Though it would not be possible to resolve the contradiction presented by the cost of sending text messages, the design of more appropriate tools could help to prevent the contradictions in the tools that were introduced by previous implementations. To do this, it was first necessary to obtain a better understanding of how staff and student users participate in the activity system of administrative communication.

Methodology

Target population

The International Foundation Programme (IFP) at the University of Birmingham is a pre-university (level 0) course consisting of full-time students from countries without a recognized equivalent to A-levels, the normal qualification for university study in the UK. The students tend to be quite young, and for many, this is their first time away from their home country. As the majority of IFP students are undertaking their academic studies in a second language, the programme is mainly focused around developing students' capacities as independent, academic learners and supporting them through standardized tests of their English language proficiency.

The IFP student experience differs from that of other students at the University of Birmingham in a number of ways.The programme is delivered by the Centre for Lifelong Learning (CLL). Cohort sizes are typically less than twenty students, and consequently there are more opportunities for tutors to have individual contact with students. Each cohort has a dedicated programme secretary, who is responsible for communicating administrative information to the students. As the remainder of the CLL's courses are offered to part-time students during the evenings and weekends, there is little scope for the IFP students to interact with students from other programmes.

Study design

A variety of research methods were used to investigate the effective use of text messaging in higher education. This section presents the overall study design as a series of four stages: requirements analysis, design and implementation, user trial and user feedback.This organization, duplicated in the results section, has been adopted to clarify what data was gathered, as well as the specific details of the data collection procedures.

Stage 1: requirements analysis

A set of focus groups was conducted in May and June 2005 to explore student perceptions about the use of mobile phones for teaching and learning. Students from both the IFP and Bachelor of Philosophy in Professional Development (BPhil) programme were invited to participate in order to represent the diversity of programmes offered at the CLL. BPhil students are mature part-time students motivated mainly by career development prospects. Most of these students are currently in full-time work related to their field of study.

Three focus groups in total were conducted: the first with 13 BPhil students (10 female, 3 male); the second with two IFP students (1 female, 1 male); and the third with two additional IFP students (1 female, 1 male). At each focus group, two scenarios involving the use of text messaging for administrative communication were presented: one describing a student receiving a text message and the other describing a student sending a text message. After each scenario was presented, a series of questions on the topics of appropriate use, cost, access and user preferences were used to prompt informal discussion.

Stage 2: StudyLink design and implementation

StudyLink, an email to text message service, was designed as a means of sending text messages to students without having to change the current tools used by the administrative staff.

Users must register their email addresses with the service before they can send text messages and must register a mobile phone number before they can receive text messages. As illustrated in Figure 1, to send a text message, a registered user simply composes an email message, using a standard email program such as Microsoft Outlook, and includes a special email address in the 'Cc:' line. By including this special email address, the user is indicating that all of the recipients in the 'To:' line should receive both an email and a text message. Text messages can thus be sent to either individuals or groups, which is a necessary requirement according to [START_REF] Divitini | Improving Communication through Mobile Technologies: Which Possibilities?[END_REF]. There are no restrictions on the number of recipients and it is not necessary to list a special email address for each user.

If the email address of a recipient matches with the mobile number of a registered user in the StudyLink database, the subject line of the email message is then sent as a text message. Otherwise, the email address is ignored, making it also possible to send the same email message to both registered and non-registered users, with only the registered users receiving the text message. Both text messages and emails are stored in a database for back-up.

Students can also send text messages from their mobile phones to a designated inbound number.The StudyLink application converts text messages received to the inbound number into email messages and sends them to a designated administrative staff member. 8) arrived in the UK from China. The home countries of the other students included:Taiwan (1); Korea (1);Turkey (1); Russia (1); and Trinidad and Tobago (1). English was a second language for all but one of the students. IFP students had regular contact with seven different tutors over the course of the trial and were administered by two programme secretaries (one in the Autumn and one in the Winter).

A C T I V E L E A R N I N G I N H I G H E R E D U C AT I O N 8(2)
Participation in the trial was completely voluntary. Students were required to indicate their consent to participate in the trial by signing a consent form and providing a UK-based mobile phone number. As all text messages would also be sent through email, students who chose not to participate would still be able to receive important administrative notices.

Eight out of the 13 students (7 Humanities, 1 Science) registered for this system. This is a very small number of students, and as such results from this trial cannot be considered to be generalizable across student groups. Their feedback can, however, provide useful insights into the feasibility and appropriateness of using text messaging in a higher education context.

Stage 4: user feedback

Feedback sessions were held with the IFP students at the end of both the Autumn and Winter terms. Six students attended the Autumn session and completed a questionnaire. An identical questionnaire distributed by email to the remaining students received three responses. Of the nine students, three had not chosen to participate in the StudyLink trial. Their reasons for this included: lack of a mobile phone (1), not understanding that it was necessary to actively provide consent and a mobile phone number (1) and thinking that the university might send too many messages (1).

Seven students attended the Winter session and completed a similar questionnaire. Of the seven students, two had not chosen to participate in the StudyLink trial. Their reasons included not being comfortable sending and receiving text messages (1) and thinking that the university might send too many messages (1). One student felt that he had missed the registration deadline and was too late to participate.

An informal 30 minute interview was conducted with the designated programme secretary at the end of each term. An online questionnaire was sent to the eleven tutors and programme coordinators involved with the trial at the end of the Autumn term. Only two responses were received. Four tutors responded to an email questionnaire distributed at the end of the Winter academic term.

Though they were all registered users, none of the tutors used the StudyLink service directly to send text messages. Four of the seven used it indirectly by requesting one of the programme secretaries to send out text messages on their behalf.

Results

Stage 1: requirements analysis Both the BPhil and IFP groups felt that text messaging is desirable to communicate information that is: time-sensitive: information should require action or directly affect the student's activities within the next 48 hours. relevant: information should be directly relevant to student's activities (e.g. my lecture, my appointment, my library books). unambiguous: information should clearly indicate required actions (if any) the part of the student. selective: a volume of 3-5 messages per week was deemed acceptable. trustworthy: messages should originate from a single contact person, who is known to the students.

The IFP group stated that they would also like to see text messaging used for:

• reminders of assignment due dates;

• reminders of application due dates;

• notification of exam results and individual feedback on assignments.

Examples from the students of appropriate text messages included notification of:

• lecture cancellations or room changes; • unplanned facility shutdowns (e.g. computer labs); • library books that are coming due or overdue; • reserved library books that have become available; • details for individual appointments with tutors, including both scheduling and rescheduling.

Students felt strongly that fee payment reminders were inappropriate to send as text messages and most also thought it was an inappropriate means to communicate information about social events.They were slightly wary that this type of system might be used to bombard them with advertising for campus-based services. Students thought that text messaging was the most effective means of ensuring information gets out to everyone, but in order to ensure receipt, 162 they preferred all information sent by text messaging to also be sent by email, echoing the findings of [START_REF] Garner | An Evaluation of the Implementation of a Short Message System (SMS) to Support Undergraduate Student Learning[END_REF], where 79 per cent of students wanted an email back-up.

Students strongly agreed that these services should be provided to them free of charge, which has also been reported by [START_REF] Stone | Blended Learning, Mobility and Retention: Supporting First-year University Students with Appropriate Technology[END_REF] and by [START_REF] Griffiths | U R L8 4 ur exam: ) -Students Opinions Towards Receiving Timely Information via SMS[END_REF]. They were particularly supportive of an advertising based system in which a portion of the message would contain advertising information, with the proviso that their mobile phone numbers not be shared or sold directly to advertisers.

With respect to a system that allowed them to send queries by text message, the BPhil students felt they would use such a system sparingly, while IFP students would use it regularly for a range of questions, similar to the findings of [START_REF] Divitini | Improving Communication through Mobile Technologies: Which Possibilities?[END_REF].

Stage 2: StudyLink design and implementation

The StudyLink text messaging service was implemented as a C# web application. A free SMS web service from m:science Ltd (www.m-science.com) was used to send and receive the text messages. The text messages were purchased in bulk from the same company, as was the inbound number that would receive text messages from students.

Stage 3: user trial

Quantity and distribution of text messages

A total of 94 email messages were sent to the special email address, 28 in the Autumn term and 66 in the Winter term. Most of the email messages were addressed to multiple recipients, resulting in an overall total of 418 text messages. This represents an average of 52 text messages per student over the two terms.

In addition to the increase in the number of emails in the Winter term, the subject lines in 20 per cent (13) of the 66 emails exceeded the 160 character limit of a text message and had to be delivered as two messages. This increased the total number of text messages by 52 from 239 to 291.

An additional eight confirmation of registration messages were sent by the system administrator, for a total of 426 text messages over the two terms. In contrast, only two text messages were received from students; one in the Autumn term and one in the Winter term. The students did, however, continue to communicate with their tutors and programme secretaries by email. [START_REF] Garner | An Evaluation of the Implementation of a Short Message System (SMS) to Support Undergraduate Student Learning[END_REF] propose the following types of text messages: course information, emergency and prompt, while [START_REF] Harley | Integrating Mobile Communications into the Workings of a University to Aid Student Retention[END_REF] classifies messages into organizational matters, general messages and individual messages. [START_REF] Riordan | The Use of Targeted Bulk SMS Texting to Enhance Student Support, Inclusion and Retention[END_REF] use five message types: urgent admin, such as room changes; general reminders, e.g. coursework deadlines; teaching materials such as revision tips; individual feedback on coursework; and individual admin such as appointments. In this study, five types of text messages were determined from user suggestions: room changes/class cancellations; reminders to submit assignments; reminders to collect assignments; notices of relevant lectures/activities; and individual administration. A review of text messages after the trial revealed the need for two additional types: instructional messages and thank you messages. The type 'Room changes and class cancellations' was also generalized into 'Notices of changes and cancellations' in order to incorporate timetable changes.

Classification of text message content

Table 1 presents a distribution of messages by type as well as providing an example of an actual text messages sent during the trial. Note that names and contact information have been replaced with '***'.

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Students

In response to the questionnaire distributed at the end of the Autumn term, five of the six participating students thought the number of messages received was 'About right', whilst the other student thought the number of messages received was 'Too low'. Seven of the nine respondents said they would subscribe to the service if it was offered for an additional term, with one being undecided and one not providing a response.

At the end of the Winter term, all five of participating students thought the number of messages received was 'About right'. They also claimed that though the messages were sent both by text and by email, they always noticed the text message first.

The students perceived all of the messages as containing useful content. Some classes of messages, including room changes/class cancellations, reminders to submit assignments and individual administration messages were deemed to be 'Very Useful' by the majority of students in both the Autumn and Winter terms. Students also made several supportive comments about the service, including:'texts are really on time' (Autumn);'they do great, just keep going' (Autumn); and 'This service is superb!' (Winter).

When the students were questioned about their attitude towards sending text messages, there was a general consensus that they would rather communicate by email when sending queries. They felt that email was a better tool to ensure that they were understood, and to keep a record of their communications.

Administrative staff

Both programme secretaries noted that the StudyLink service was easy to use and to integrate with their normal working practices. They felt that many students didn't check their email regularly, and that this type of service was a way to ensure that information was delivered and thus to protect against possible appeals. One of the programme secretaries felt that, overall, text messages were more reliable than email.They speculated that some of the tutors might not have realized the benefits of contacting students by text message, and thus did not provide them with information in a timely manner.

Academic staff

In response to the Autumn term questionnaire, one respondent stated that he did not see a need to contact the students by text message, while the other stated that she did not have a mobile phone or 'do text messaging'.The latter respondent commented that she thought it should be up to the programme secretary to decide if a message was appropriate to send through StudyLink. With respect to the perceived impact of the system, one of the respondents commented that she thought the students had generally been better at attending lectures and other events, but that this could be due to a variety of factors.

In response to the Winter term questionnaire, the four tutors who sent text messages through the programme secretaries felt it to be effective: 'I am convinced of its value as a means of communication' (Tutor 1); 'the system is reliable. Students get the messages and respond accordingly' (Tutor 3); 'the messages got through and were acted upon' (Tutor 4).They saw the main strength of text messaging to be its ability to reach the students anywhere: 'not all students have easy access to computers at all times but do look at their phones constantly' (Tutor 2); 'it's a marvellous tool for speedily contacting students' (Tutor 3).

Three of the four tutors felt that text messages should be used mainly for important messages including timetable or room changes, and important reminders about assessments, though one tutor commented that he used the service 'fairly indiscriminately in the end, as the students were so accepting of it. In other words, every email I sent had a text message reminder' (Tutor 3). One of the tutors used text messages exclusively for group reminders, while the others also found it useful for individual administration: 'A student who had been out of contact and had serious problems with assessments not received or failed, received a call for an urgent personal tutorial and attended for advice in time to alert them to the implications of this' (Tutor 2); 'I used the service both for general reminders, and for specific requests for students to contact me' (Tutor 3).

While the tutors did not observe any negative impact of this service on student behaviour, they noted that the voluntary nature of the service meant that not all of the students would get the urgent messages and that there was a danger of bombarding students with text message communication.

Conclusions

Students participate in a variety of overlapping activity systems, both inside and outside of their institutions. In order for text messaging to fit into these activity systems, they must communicate information that is timesensitive, relevant, unambiguous, selective and trustworthy. Following a two term trial of StudyLink, an email to text message service, students reported high levels of satisfaction with both the quantity and content of the 418 text messages sent. Notices of relevant lectures/activities were the most popular type of message, though individual administration messages were cited by the tutors as being particularly effective.

StudyLink was an effective tool for communicating with students, as it joined two of the students' current activity systems -receiving emails and receiving text messages. Students clearly linked receiving a text message to taking appropriate action, a rule that had perhaps developed from text messaging in other contexts. It was also clear that the students expected text messaging to be provided in addition to, rather than substitute for, the communication that they normally received by email. The students also were not able to resolve the contradiction that text messaging presented in their ability to communicate information back to the institution, and instead continued to rely on email. This was somewhat surprising, as previous authors have suggested that text messages should be used as a two-way form of communication (see, for example, [START_REF] Divitini | Improving Communication through Mobile Technologies: Which Possibilities?[END_REF][START_REF] Griffiths | Campus-wide Implementation of SMS Text Services within a Blackboard VLE[END_REF] and the previous IFP cohort had indicated they would use such a service for a variety of queries. The expressed need from this cohort to ensure that they were understood may be related to their insecurity communicating in a second language.

In the activity system of communicating administrative information to students, the programme secretary is the subject and the message to be communicated to the student is the object.The desired outcome is to deliver the message in a timely manner, such that it can be acted upon appropriately. For the programme secretaries, email was already the established tool for mediating this activity.The StudyLink service allowed them to use the same tool to send both text messages and emails. It was necessary to implement different rules, such as placing all pertinent information in the subject line. Some contradictions were introduced, as evidenced by the proportion of messages that exceeded the 160 character limit. As long messages were handled internally by the system, it is entirely possible that the programme secretaries were not even aware of this issue. Simply bringing it to their attention may resolve the contradiction, as the programme secretaries were quite receptive to the use of this service. One of the two programme secretaries even showed a willingness to experiment with the informality of text messaging (e.g. omitting vowels), which [START_REF] Harley | Integrating Mobile Communications into the Workings of a University to Aid Student Retention[END_REF] suggests is important for making students feel at ease. None of the seven tutors sent text messages directly, though four of them sent text messages indirectly by specifically asking one of the programme secretaries to send text messages for them. The programme secretaries had a lot of autonomy in how they communicated with students, and it is likely that they sent out some text messages on behalf of the other tutors as well. This apparent lack of ownership amongst the academic staff is likely more reflective of the established division of labour within the CLL, rather than of their views on the use of text messaging.

After the initial information session and registration period, there was a perception from both staff and students that it was difficult to add students to the system, when in fact this could be done quite easily by the system administrator. This represents a contradiction in the element of division of labour.

A similar experience was encountered when students wanted to change their mobile phone numbers, also reported as an issue in [START_REF] Garner | An Evaluation of the Implementation of a Short Message System (SMS) to Support Undergraduate Student Learning[END_REF].

Limitations

While this study has demonstrated how a text messaging service can be effectively integrated into the activity systems of staff and students, it must be noted that it involved a very small number of students whose academic experience is unconventional. While the preferences of the students towards the types of text messages they would like to receive is broadly in line with the existing literature, the response from other student groups may differ.

The design of StudyLink assumes that email is the primary tool for administrative communication. Institutions that rely on other means of communication, such as face-to-face sessions or notice boards may experience resistance from staff towards changing their working practices.

For the user trial, the costs of the text messages were absorbed by the project budget.This may have resulted in the administrative staff sending more text messages than they would have if their centre was required to cover the costs.

Future research

There is a need for larger-scale trials across mainstream academic programmes, with proportionally smaller numbers of support staff, to further investigate the contradictions that administrative text messaging introduces into the activity systems of both staff and students. In particular, contradictions relating to the cost of text messaging need to be considered carefully, as the benefits of student satisfaction and promoting changes in behaviour are not directly quantifiable.

Further work is also needed to formalize the rules for informal, technology-mediated communication. [START_REF] Harley | The Role of SMS Text Messaging in Supporting Transition to University[END_REF] notes that text messages sent en masse are still received as if they were personal communications, which can be used to foster a set of belonging to the university community, but there is a danger of impinging on students' social spaces [START_REF] Sharples | The Student Learning Organiser[END_REF]. It is also conceivable that services like StudyLink could create a further contradiction in the rules of responding to administrative communication, as students could become dependent on the service and not take any action in the absence of a text message reminder.

Further developments also need to take into account the ability for end users to execute management tasks such as registration and updating contact details.

Implications

The use of text messaging and the design principles underlying StudyLink can be applied to a variety of situations in higher education. Text messages can reach students anywhere, and can save them significant amounts of travel time and frustration when changes or cancellations occur at the last minute. Students clearly associate text messages with taking action, and as such they can be used to prompt desired behaviour, such as attending lectures or turning in assignments on time. Individually addressed messages can be particularly effective in reaching students who may not be communicating through other channels.When used as polite reminders and thank you messages, text messages can promote a 'culture of niceties' [START_REF] Griffiths | Campus-wide Implementation of SMS Text Services within a Blackboard VLE[END_REF], and can be one way of addressing issues of student retention and satisfaction.

  Stage 3: user trial A trial of the StudyLink service was initiated with the IFP students at the beginning of the Autumn academic term in September 2005 and continued 160

Figure 1 Sending a text message to a student through

  to the end of the Winter academic term in March 2006.There were a total of 13 (5 female, 8 male) students in the IFP cohort in the 2005/2006 academic year. Ten of these students were registered as IFP Humanities and Social Sciences students, while three were registered as IFP Science students. Most students (

	Email server	StudyLink application server
		polls email server
		at regular intervals
	User composes
	email message StudyLink application server	StudyLink application processes email message	m:science web service sends text message	Student receives text message	Student can check email for further details
	Database
	server

Table 1 Distribution of messages by type

 1

	Message type	Example message	Number	Number
			of email	of text
			messages	messages
	Notices of changes	From ***: Your class with *** is	8	53
	and cancellations	cancelled this Thursday.The
		next meeting will be 16 March
		when you will deliver
		your group presentations
	Reminders to submit	From ***: Pl. submit Econ Ass. 4	11	37
	assignments
	Reminders to collect	From ***: Pl. collect yr English	12	34
	assignments	texts from yr pigeonhole
	Notices of relevant	From ***: Reminder: ISAS Talk,	31	223
	lectures/activities	FRIDAY 21 OCT, 10.45 A.M.
		RM G.04
	Individual	From ***: Please contact ***, *** to	17	21
	administration	explain why you are not attending
		his course: History of Scientific
		Ideas in Western Culture
	Instructional	From ***: When submitting	7	40
	messages	assignments a hard copy must
		be handed in as well as emailing
		a copy to ***
	Thank you messages From ***: Thank you very much to	3	10
		those students who attended the
		meeting with *** on Thursday ***

N A I S M I T H : T E X T M E S S A G I N G F O R C O M M U N I C AT I O N

Acknowledgements

This research was funded by a grant from Microsoft UK Ltd to the Centre for Learning, Innovation and Collaboration (CLIC, formerly CETADL) at the University of Birmingham. The help and support of the students and staff at the Centre for Lifelong Learning is gratefully acknowledged, as are the comments from the two anonymous reviewers.

Biographical notes

LAURA NAISMITH is a research associate at the University of Birmingham's Centre for Learning, Innovation & Collaboration (CLIC). Her current research interests include the design of web-based technology to support collaborative working and assessment. Her recent publications include an activity-based literature review of mobile technologies and learning, commissioned by Futurelab. Address: Centre for Learning, Innovation & Collaboration, Gisbert Kapp Building, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT, UK.

[email: L. Naismith@bham.ac.uk]


Lynne P Baldwin

scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés.

Editorial

LY N N E P. B A L DW I N Brunel University, UK Higher education, it is said, is suffering something of an identity crisis given the changing landscape. Many would say that the changes over the last ten years or so have been faster and more far-reaching than at any other period of time in the past. 'Fast' and 'far-reaching' are neither simple to describe nor easy to measure. Being 'fast' at the age of five in the egg and spoon race at school is a very different 'fast' from that of winning the 100 m at the Olympics. That said, each can be measured fairly easily; in seconds -or minutes, perhaps, for the egg and spoon race! It is thus fairly easy to say that child/runner A is faster than child/runner B; we can use a stopwatch to measure the performances of each participant in the race.'Fast' -and thus 'faster' -in terms of change in higher education is, however, a different thing altogether, given that it is a difficult thing to measure, and much is subjective and contextdependent.The 'stopwatch' used seems often to be our perceptions of change itself; a great deal of change in a short(er) period of time (whatever 'a great deal' and 'short' mean) is for many uncomfortable. It also depends on viewpoint/level. At one level we might say that higher education has not changed at all; students come into higher education and we, as educators, help them to learn.This was as true 50, or 500, years ago as it is today. For those who are more focused on this 'bigger picture' view of higher education, that there are far greater numbers of students entering higher education these days is seen as a change, but a small one. For those who are more focused on what is happening on a more day-to-day basis, this change is enormous.

Whether we consider the increase in student numbers as a big or a small change, none will disagree about its impact: a greater student population means, practically speaking, larger class sizes for most of us. The definition of 'large class sizes' is similarly subjective and context-dependent: 'large', to some, can be a class of 50 students, whereas to others a class of 'only' 50 students is a rare thing. There are many of us who are regularly in classrooms where 750 students cannot now be squeezed into lecture theatres designed for 'large groups' of 400; the 750 have to be split into two 'small' groups of around 375 or so, with the lecturer delivering the same lecture twice. This is the case, at least, in the UK, where funding for universities is government-controlled and diminishing year on year, and thus institutions have to weigh up whether or not the funds should be used for infrastructure such as new lecture theatres or whether to finance something else instead, such as student accommodation. A new lecture block is very expensive, and even if there is space on campus (and in big cities, such as central London, there is little, if any), it is a matter of weighing up the priorities for investment. How big or small a change we are witnessing in higher education also depends on how long we have worked in it; those who entered, say, only a year ago, are likely to view change differently from, say, those who have been teaching for 20 years and who thus have far longer experience on which to base their judgement. Whether we feel comfortable (happy) to be working, and shaping, the higher education environment in which both we and our students work and learn depends for the most part on how we, as individuals, view the world about us.There are, however, some factors/facts which, at some level or in some way or another, affect how we work and learn in higher education these days.

One such factor is the technology that is now available to support our students' learning. There is no university that does not have a campus-wide computer-based learning (CBL) tool of one type or another.The need for any debate as to whether computers are a good thing or not, and whether we should adopt their use, has long been unnecessary. CBL tools are, like the blackboard (and then the whiteboard) before them, merely tools, and if used appropriately, can aid both the learning and the teaching (two different things). Whilst this debate might have been relevant some ten years ago, when computing technology was being introduced, its ubiquity, and the fact that it is merely a support/aid, needs no discussion today. Using CBL might well be new for an individual educator in a particular context/institution, and there are many of us who are less than keen to use it, or to use it to its full potential, anyway, given that for many, technology is still somewhat 'scary'. However, that it is new for an individual educator in a particular context/institution does not make it new per se. It is neither novel nor new; it is instead standard, normal, and our learners today expect it (there is vociferous complaint when it is available but not used by individual educators!).

For those of us teaching large classes, it might be argued that there is a greater incentive for us to harness the benefits of computing technology. However, harnessing such technology in 'the digital age' in the context of the classroom is not without its challenges, as can be seen in the first article, entitled 'Central issues in the use of computer-based materials for high volume entrepreneurship education'. In this, Billy Cooper reports that for some of us, the use of CBL tools might involve only the loading up of lecture notes. Whilst this has the advantage of making these available to all (some students may have had very good reason to have been absent and may be off campus), it might be argued that this is trying to replicate the 'normal' classroom (rather than handing out the notes in class, we make them available online instead, or in addition). However, such is CBL technology that those with sufficient expertise can have available for their learners highly sophisticated programs such as game software, as the author notes. In the discussion of the benefits and disadvantages of CBL tools, the research described in the article looks, among other things, at the potential 'mismatch(es)' between what learners want and expect, and what the technology actually delivers. Students in the study described were asked to rate their preference(s) for either a multimedia presentation of content-related material or the on-screen text version of the same.The author cites literature which suggests that there is no significant difference between the two, yet the results of the author's study reveal a significant difference in student preference, suggesting that there is much more work to be done in this area.The article concludes with some useful recommendations for those of us who may be considering the introduction or improvement of CBL in their own institutions. The author concludes by saying that 'it is largely irrelevant' as to whether the technology we use to deliver the material is via 'CD ROM, hard drive based software, server-based network-distributed, or globally distributed software via Internet connectivity [and that] while there are technical issues of difference, the learning issues remain relevant' (p. 216).The author is spot on here; the issue is not with the technology itself, although many of us will have to learn how to use it, or how to use it more effectively, but instead with the focus on the learning, not the teaching.

Comparing, although not the comparison of the 'old' with the 'new', is a theme in the second article, 'Effects of performance assessment on the achievement and motivation of graduate students', by Dawson R. Hancock, from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA. As assessment is so vital an aspect of our work in higher education given its impact on our students' performance and, ultimately, the award that they receive as a result of that performance, the assessment methods that we choose to use need our careful consideration.The author describes two commonly-used methods, namely, those which are termed 'selected response' and those termed 'constructed response'. As the name suggests, the former means that the student being assessed must choose a response (or more) from a range of possible responses. In contrast, the latter involves the student having to provide their own response to the question. Amongst the choices available to us in terms of asking our students to provide their own responses to the questions is to ask them to perform an activity of one sort or another in front of the assessor. Common and much-used, naturally enough, in disciplines such as the performing arts, the advantages and drawbacks of such performance-based tasks are outlined. Of particular interest to the study described in the article is the effect(s) of such an assessment on motivation and achievement. In the study, two groups of students on the same course were taught in the same manner but assessed differently; neither group knew of this difference. Of note is that this study focuses not only on motivation but also on achievement; how students actually perform following a particular intervention of one sort or another is often lacking in studies. Much of the literature contains studies which report students' perceptions, that is, whether or in what ways they believe it may have impacted their learning. However, what we believe may, or may not, reflect our actual behaviour which, in this case, means performance on task. As can be seen from the results, the different assessment tasks impacted, in significantly different ways, the learners' motivation and achievement.

With 750 students in a class, how often, and in what ways, such assessment can be used needs careful consideration; all impact not only on the learner but also those who set and mark assessments.The benefits of utilizing technology in classrooms with 750 students or more is readily apparent and, as stated earlier, all universities now have a campus-wide computer-based learning (CBL) tool of one type or another. Far less common, in the UK at least, is the use of audience response systems (ARS). As the authors of the third article, 'Empowering or compelling reluctant participators using response systems' say, these have recently become available as off-the-shelf products which can easily be used with commonly-used packages such as PowerPoint and the like. In this article, Charles R. Graham et al., from Brigham Young University, USA, describe the pros and cons of audience response systems, noting that one of the technology's most notable benefits is that its use makes it far more likely that the shy and/or reluctant learner will participate. However, the authors argue that whilst there is much literature which attests to the benefits for learners, there has been insufficient attention paid to learners they term as 'reluctant participators'; an important sub-group of the class. While many researchers seek to find evidence to support great(er) use of technology, including ARS, of note here is that students were asked what aspects of the technology were not helpful/useful to them. Their use as a means of testing/assessing students was, unsurprisingly, one such negative given the apparent technical difficulties. Another was that teachers used the tool as a means of checking attendance, and penalized (by deducting marks) those who did not attend. Students were also unimpressed by being given marks for wrong (rather than right) answers to quizzes based on reading that they had done earlier/before the class. As the quote from one of the students aptly put it, the use of ARS seemed to be determined not by its value/use to the student but instead to reduce the amount of marking for the teacher.

Whether the case or not, the article highlights why we should make more use of audience response systems than is currently the case, namely, that they allow for more/better participation in class and that students can immediately assess their own knowledge and/or performance. Often unavailable to students via 'standard' classroom practice are the 'opinions and attitudes' of their peers, as the authors point out. In a large class, but even in a small one, without such technology it is very difficult indeed to find out what everyone else in the room thinks; all that is normally heard is the voice of those who speak out, and these are, by definition, a tiny minority and these may not be representative of the whole cohort.Whilst not cheap (the respondents highlighted this as one of its main drawbacks), appropriate use of this technology could reap great rewards for both teacher and learner.

Feelings of isolation, not belonging, being different ('worse') are perhaps most keenly felt by those in any new environment, including that of being a new student (or a new lecturer).'New' is often 'scary', however self-confident we might be in other areas of our lives. Finding yourself in a classroom full of 750 students (as nerve-wracking for the new lecturer as for the new student, in most cases) and a myriad of other factors make the transition from school to university a difficult period for most, if not all. It is not surprising, then, that the vast majority of students who drop out of university do so in their first year.

As the authors of the fourth article, entitled 'Skills, learning styles and success of first-year undergraduates' rightly say, attrition has recently been high profile in the literature, not least because of the significant growth of students coming into higher education in the UK and thus the greater number who drop out. Whilst the actual number/percentage is very low indeed, at least in the UK, Judy Goldfinch and Moira Hughes make the interesting point that we have to date been overly keen to attribute the reason for dropping out to some sort of 'problem' with the student, that is, they drop out because of personal circumstances and/or some lack of ability. Drawing on the literature on assimilation, that is, 'fit', the authors draw our attention to the two, differing views of this important aspect of higher education. One, students have to fit into the institution and its practices, norms and values. Two, that institutions need to change in order to better match the needs of what is seen as an increasingly diverse student population. By overly focusing on the personal circumstances of students themselves, we are in essence saying that they have in some way failed to 'fit' into our institution. However, it may perhaps be the case that the opposite is a more common reason for students dropping out, namely, that we have in some way failed to adapt and that there are changes that we need to make in order to better accommodate our students' personal circumstances and/or abilities. The authors rightly say that much previous work looking at why students drop out has been gathered from those who actually did so.The study described in the article gathered data not only from staff but also from those who had considered leaving but instead remained.The article concludes with a thought-provoking overview of what we are currently trying to do, that is, to address what we perceive as 'deficits' in our students. As the authors rightly say, given our 'enormous effort and energy' we should instead be focusing our attention on issues which are to a great extent within our control to change, such as providing better guidance for students on assignments, in order to improve the student experience.

Confidence, so vital an aspect of whatever we do, is yet another factor which comes sharply into focus for those coming into higher education, whether as new students or members of staff. However, too much confidence can cause us as much difficulty as too little, as the study described in the fifth and final article demonstrates. In their article entitled 'Conceptions of early leaving: a comparison of the views of teaching staff and students', Pat Young, Margaret Glogowska and Lesley Lockyer report that many students come into higher education with the belief that their skills in certain key areas are better than they actually are. In the study described, skills such as time management, teamwork and self-reliance are looked at in relation not only to the amount of confidence that students have in these when they enter but also the correlation between these and their eventual success.This is further complicated by learning style, gender, age and type of task, naturally enough, and the article discusses each of these in relation to both confidence and success. In order to increase retention but also to improve the experiences of our first-year students, the results of the study lead the authors to ask whether we should, for example, concentrate on helping our students to develop better time management skills, or provide earlier formative assessment in skills related to written communication. The authors conclude their article with a useful section detailing the implications for practice, and direct us to further ideas for adoption in our classrooms. It is evident from this article that the authors echo the comments of Judy Goldfinch and Moira Hughes, above, in that they ask what changes we might make in order to better assist our learners in their learning -and that there is much that we can, and should, do. Change may be uncomfortable for some, whether for a student or a lecturer, but without change it is absolutely certain that there cannot be improvement. Naturally enough, it is also the case that change can make things worse, which might perhaps explain why there is often reluctance, if not fear of change. However, there can surely be no 'risk' involved in, say, providing better guidance for students on assignments (a suggestion made by the authors of the fourth article). Being neither over-nor under-confident, we should examine our practices and, in our efforts to improve the student experience, change what we do. As it is impossible to change others (we can change only ourselves), we can in any case do nothing other. 200


Skills, learning styles and success of first-year undergraduates

Keywords: academic perfor mance, business underg raduates, generic skills, lear ning styles, retention

A B S T R AC T This study investigates the relationships between students' confidence in their generic skills on entry to university, their learning styles and their academic performance in first year. Research based on a large cohort of Scottish undergraduates found that students generally entered university feeling very confident that they already possessed good skills, and there was a suggestion of over-confidence in that those who failed the year entered with slightly higher confidence than other students. However, those students who withdrew during the year had significantly less confidence. The most significant combination of factors in explaining success in first year were a low score on the activist learning style scale and high initial confidence in the skills of selfreliance, time management and teamwork, together with lower initial confidence in written communication skills. The implications of this research are discussed and some suggestions made for improving educational practice.

Introduction

The number of students who fail to complete their undergraduate studies, either through failure or through deciding to withdraw from their programme of study, has been an issue for some time (SCEE [Select Committee on Education and Employment], 2001).This is particularly a feature of first year, with around ten per cent of UK full-time higher education students withdrawing during or at the end of their first year (Yorke, 2002: 12).

Reasons that students give for why they withdraw in their first year have been widely researched, and a good review of the literature can be found in [START_REF] Hall | Retention and Wastage in FE and HE, Scottish Council for Research in Education[END_REF]. The issue is a complex one, and the decision to withdraw usually results from 'an accumulated combination of problems' (Hall, 2001: 18). Commonly given reasons are 'wrong choice of field of study, academic difficulties, financial problems, poor quality of the student experience, unhappiness with the social environment, and dissatisfaction with institutional provision' (Yorke, 2004: 20). Retention rates and reasons for withdrawing have been found to vary by subject studied, gender [START_REF] Johnston | Why Do First Year Students Fail to Progress to their Second Year? An Academic Staff Perspective[END_REF] and social background [START_REF] Raab | Participation in Higher Education in Scotland[END_REF], although studies at different institutions have found opposing results about the effect of age [START_REF] Johnston | Why Do First Year Students Fail to Progress to their Second Year? An Academic Staff Perspective[END_REF]. Opinions seem to differ on the extent to which differences in the characteristics of the students on entry (such as motivation, entry qualifications, personal circumstances) form the most important factors in retention compared to their experiences on or shortly after starting their undergraduate courses [START_REF] Davies | Dropping Out: A Study of Early Leavers from Higher Education[END_REF][START_REF] Floud | Policy Implications of Student Non-completion: Government, Funding Councils and Universities[END_REF].

Retention and skills

Lack of academic skills, such as essay writing and note taking, has been found to be one reason commonly given by mature students for withdrawal [START_REF] Mcgivney | Staying or Leaving the Course[END_REF], and lack of self-management skills and/or study skills is commonly given as a reason by younger students [START_REF] Yorke | Leaving Early: Undergraduate Non-completion in Higher Education[END_REF]. Poor time management has also been identified as contributing to students withdrawing or failing [START_REF] Fitzgibbon | Student Expectations and University Interventions -A Timeline to Aid Undergraduate Student Retention[END_REF]. University teaching staff, when asked why students do not succeed, cite the need for study skills enhancement [START_REF] Johnston | Why Do First Year Students Fail to Progress to their Second Year? An Academic Staff Perspective[END_REF]. Qualifications and Curriculum Agency (QCA) key skills test scores have certainly been found to correlate strongly with A-level performance [START_REF] Murphy | The Skills of Students entering Higher Education[END_REF] and low Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) core skill qualifications have been linked to withdrawal from further education in Scotland [START_REF] Mcguire | Investigating Student Retention[END_REF]2001).

Students tend to enter university with high confidence in their key skills, particularly those of communication and working with others, and, for many, in improving their own learning [START_REF] Cook | Do Expectations Meet Reality? A Survey of Changes in First Year Student Opinion[END_REF][START_REF] Murphy | The Skills of Students entering Higher Education[END_REF]. However, this confidence may not be well founded, and only in the more objective skills of IT and numeracy have students' self-estimates been found to correlate well with actual assessment of these skills [START_REF] Murphy | The Skills of Students entering Higher Education[END_REF]. Students do not recognize that their existing study skills may no longer be sufficient at university (Johnson, 1997;[START_REF] Lowe | Mind the Gap: Are Students Prepared for Higher Education?[END_REF] and may resent the need to change them [START_REF] Richardson | The Transition to Degree Level Study[END_REF].

Academic performance has also been found to be correlated with some key skills. For example, confidence in the long-term planning aspect of time management, though not daily planning, has been shown to be correlated with academic performance in first year at university [START_REF] Trueman | A Comparison Between the Time-Management Skills and Academic Performance of Mature and Traditional-entry University Students[END_REF]. Similarly, lack of confidence in written communication skills has been found to be correlated with poor performance on an accounting degree, though only in later years of the course and no such correlation was found in first year [START_REF] Gardner | Oral and Written Communication Apprehension in Accounting Students: Curriculum Impacts and Impacts on Academic Performance[END_REF]. Lack of confidence in oral communication showed no consistent correlation with academic performance in any year.

Learning styles

Students' learning styles are known to affect their performance at university [START_REF] Marriott | Student Learning Style Preferences and Undergraduate Academic Performance at Two UK Universities[END_REF][START_REF] Sangster | Objective Tests, Learning to Learn and Learning Styles[END_REF]. A student's 'learning style' reflects his or her preference(s) for the four stages of the adult learning cycle: having an experience (the activist stage), reviewing the experience (the reflector stage), concluding from the experience (the theorist stage), and planning the next steps (the pragmatist stage) [START_REF] Honey | The Manual of Learning Styles[END_REF]. All four stages are necessary for fully effective learning but, as Honey and Mumford explain,'most people develop preferences which give them a liking for certain stages over others.The preferences lead to a distortion of the learning process so that greater emphasis is placed on some stages to the detriment of others'. Honey and Mumford's Learning Style Questionnaire (LSQ) provides four scores for each student, one for each of the stages of the learning cycle.

High scores on the reflector scale and low scores on the activist scale have been shown to be positively correlated with marks on objective tests at university though not on essay style examination questions [START_REF] Sangster | Objective Tests, Learning to Learn and Learning Styles[END_REF]. Similarly, students with a preference for the theorist stage have been shown to be more successful in university accounting courses than those with a preference for the activist stage [START_REF] Marriott | Student Learning Style Preferences and Undergraduate Academic Performance at Two UK Universities[END_REF].

To summarize, lack of study and self-management skills is one of the common reasons given by students and staff to explain withdrawal or poor performance in first year at university. Many students enter higher education with high confidence in their skills, which does not always accord with the skills that they actually have or need. Studies have shown that students' performance in higher education correlates with their confidence in some key skill areas and also, but separately, with their learning style scores.This study investigates, for one particular group of first year students, the relationships between their success in the year, their initial confidence in a range of key skills, and their scores on the four scales of the Honey & Mumford LSQ. Demographic factors such as age, gender and social class will be taken into account.

Methodology

A study was conducted, taking as its sample a large group of undergraduates starting university in the year 2001/2.These students were all full-time, first year students at a post-1992 Scottish university business school, studying programmes ranging from accounting to languages. The student group was 75 per cent Scottish with six per cent from England, five per cent from Northern Ireland and four per cent from Mainland China.Although half of the students were aged 18, 23 per cent were 21 or over. All the students studied six out of eight modules in common, three per semester, the remaining module each semester being programme-specific.The core modules were assessed by a mixture of examination and coursework. The coursework included essays, group work, oral presentations and investigations. The coursework weighting ranged from 30 per cent to 100 per cent.

In their second week at university, students were asked about their confidence in each of the generic and study skills which make up the first level of the university's Employability Skills and Attributes Model. These are the skill levels that students could be expected to have achieved by the end of first year at a Scottish university and can be seen in Figure 1.The list comprises 34 individual skills under nine skills area headings. Students were asked, for each skill, to rate how confident they felt with that skill on a range from 5 ('High confidence') down to 1 ('Low confidence').There was no evidence of rushed responses or incomplete questionnaires.The questionnaire also asked students about the extent of their previous full-and part-time work experience.

In the same week as completing this questionnaire, students completed Honey and Mumford's Learning Style Questionnaire [START_REF] Honey | The Manual of Learning Styles[END_REF] and the scores on each of the four scales (activist, reflector, theorist and pragmatist) were recorded for each student. An excellent summary of learning styles is given in [START_REF] Coffield | Learning Styles and Pedagogy in Post-16 Learning. A Systematic and Critical Review[END_REF]. Honey and Mumford's LSQ was used in this study as the students were already completing this as part of one of their modules. Although there is debate about the validity of the LSQ, its 'test-retest reliability' is high (Coffield et al., 2004: 73) and the current study does not use the Honey and Mumford 'labels' but simply the students' scores on each of the LSQ scales. However, when asked to reflect on how well Honey and Mumford's descriptions of the labels applied to them, students expressed surprise at how well they did. Other data were collected from the student database including ethnic grouping, nationality, term-time residence and social class.

At the end of year Programme Board, marks for the students in the six common modules were recorded, as was the progression decision. A total of 219 complete records were available for analysis. To aid the analysis the 34 detailed skills were grouped together where they were in the same skill area and where the student responses were highly correlated. This reduced the number of skills to 13:

Time management Setting and achieving goals

Getting help and information Notes (taking and organizing) Bibliography Written communication Spoken communication Numeracy IT skills Problem solving Self reliance/taking responsibility Teamwork Self evaluation

In addition to looking at the relationships between student marks or progression and their initial skills confidence, their learning styles and their demographic details, multiple and logistic regression were used to determine the interaction and relative importance of the various factors.

Results

Skills confidence on entry

The students' responses to the detailed skills questionnaire are shown in Figure 1. With 5 for the highest confidence down to 1 for the lowest, the mean scores were high. The highest average was 4.6 for 'using a word processor effectively' followed by 4.5 for 'working as a member of a team'. The lowest mean was 3.4 for 'compiling a bibliography', followed by 3.5 for 'presenting a straightforward spoken argument to a small group of people'.

Younger students were significantly more confident than the older ones for the IT skills (r ϭ Ϫ0.3, p ϭ 0.000).The overall IT average for 17 and 18 year olds was 4.4, dropping for each age group to only 3.6 for students aged 30 or more. There were no other strong correlations of skills confidence with age.

When comparing gender differences, females were slightly more confident than males for self evaluation (mean 4.0 compared to a male mean of 3.8, p ϭ 0.078). They were, however, significantly less confident than the male students at numeracy (mean 3.7 compared to male mean 4.1, p ϭ 0.005).

None of the demographic variables such as social class, nationality and ethnic grouping showed statistically significant differences in students' confidence in their skills. Although 50 per cent of the sample had worked full-time, 14 per cent for more than a year, and 82 per cent had worked part-time, the extent of students' work-experience showed no significant correlations with skills confidences, over and above the age factor.

Skills confidence on entry, retention and success

In Figure 2 the mean score on the 13 grouped skills is shown for each of four groups of students: • W is the mean score of students who had officially withdrawn from the university prior to the September Examination Board; • F is the mean for students who still had fails in more than two modules after the August resit diet and so were not eligible to proceed to the second year of their course; • PR is the mean score of students who had fails in one or two modules after the resit diet but were allowed to proceed into second year carrying those modules; and • P is the mean for students who had passed everything by September.

The students who withdrew during the year had, at the start of the year, been significantly less confident about many skills, particularly time management, taking and organizing notes, spoken communication, teamwork and self evaluation. In contrast, the students who failed at the end of the year had been more confident than other students about many skills, particularly their communication skills.

Those students who passed all their modules had rated themselves better at time management and self reliance than any other group and better at all the other skills than the students who failed one or two modules. When investigating correlations between skills confidence and the average marks (coursework and examinations combined) over the six common modules, those students who rated themselves most highly in the following skills at the start of the year gained, on average, higher marks. These relationships were all significant, though not strong.

Self reliance (p ϭ 0.001) Time management (p ϭ 0.002) Self evaluation (p ϭ 0.019) Setting and achieving goals (p ϭ 0.036).

None of the other skills were significantly correlated with the module marks.

Learning styles, skills and success

The students in the study displayed mean scores on the four learning styles that very closely matched the norms given by [START_REF] Honey | The Manual of Learning Styles[END_REF] for A-level and diploma students, who would be at a similar stage in their lives to most students just starting a Scottish university course.

There were several correlations between students' skill confidence and their scores on the Honey and Mumford Learning Style Questionnaire: see Table 1. All the correlations shown in Table 1 are statistically significant, indicating a tendency for those students in the sample with, say, high scores on the activist scale to feel more confident about their teamwork skills. However, none of the correlation coefficients was more than 0.34 so, for individual students, a high activist score, say, does not necessarily mean high confidence in teamwork skills.

266 A C T I V E L E A R N I N G I N H I G H E R E D U C AT I O N 8(3)
Students with a highly activist learning style performed less well in all subjects in their first year, including those with a high proportion of coursework in the assessment (p Ͻ 0.004). Students with a highly reflective learning style did best in non-quantitative subjects (p Ͻ 0.011), whereas students with highly theoretical learning styles did better in accounting (p ϭ 0.013).

Other factors and success

The percentage of male students failing the year (19%) was significantly higher than that of females (7%) (p ϭ 0.000), although the percentages proceeding into second year carrying modules was very similar for both sexes, as were the percentages withdrawing. The average marks of all those students who were eligible to proceed to the next year did not differ significantly between the sexes, neither overall nor by individual modules. Several studies have also indicated the general under-performance of male students (see Johnson, 1997), but it is interesting in this study that the problem seemed to occur mainly in those students who failed to engage with their course yet did not officially withdraw, a fact that concurs with anecdotal tutor reports.

Neither social class nor age were significant factors in whether students passed their first year. Age was significantly positively correlated with the average mark (p ϭ 0.008), but this was the result of the high average marks gained by the students over 21 who survived to the end of the year -48 per cent of those students achieved an average mark of 70 or more compared to only 9 per cent of younger students. For students of 21 or under, average mark showed no correlation with age.

Where students lived during term-time was a marginally significant factor in their success (p ϭ 0.08), with fewer of the students who owned their own home or lived in privately rented accommodation passing all their modules compared to students living with parents or in university accommodation (56% passed compared to 64%). Correspondingly, more failed too many modules to be allowed entry into Year 2 (21% failed compared to 10%). 75% of these students were over 18 on entry, with 21 per cent over 24 years old, but the pattern was independent of age and occurred for all age groups.

Combinations of factors for success

In the regression modelling of the combination of factors explaining a high average mark, the best fitting model contained the factors:

• a low activist score (the most significant factor); • high initial confidence in the skills of:

• self reliance (second most important factor),

• time management, and • teamwork; • low initial confidence in written communication.

The other variables, including gender, do not have a significant effect on the average end-of-year mark over and above these five. Low confidence in written communication skills is not by itself directly correlated to the average mark, but enters the model as a combination with confidence in the other five skill variables. This reinforces the importance of 'self reliance', 'time-management' and 'teamwork', since it suggests that students do well if they can specifically pick these out as their strengths rather than exhibiting a global confidence.

The logistic regression investigating the combinations of factors explaining success (passing all modules) in the year yielded very similar results. A low activist score continued to be the most significant factor, and higher confidence in time management, lower confidence in written communication, and either higher confidence in self reliance or higher confidence in teamwork were the other significant factors in the best multiple model. In this model, however, time management is more significant than self reliance or teamwork.

Discussion

Age, gender, low scores on the activist learning style and good time management skills have all previously been shown to be separately related to success at university in some way. However, these factors are themselves inter-related and this study has shown how they work in combination. A low activist learning style score is the most important factor, but confidence in self-reliance, time management and teamwork skills have also been shown to be important, as well as the adverse affect of entering university over-confident in written communication skills.

The inclusion of time management as an important factor is in agreement with the findings of [START_REF] Trueman | A Comparison Between the Time-Management Skills and Academic Performance of Mature and Traditional-entry University Students[END_REF]. However, unlike their study, no significant difference was found in time management skills for older v younger students, nor for female v male students. Lower marks associated with possible over-confidence in written communication skills may show the effect of the findings by [START_REF] Richardson | The Transition to Degree Level Study[END_REF] that some students come to university with very fixed ideas about essay and report writing, and seem almost to resent having to change their written methods from those they learned at school. This study has also shown a difference between those students who chose to leave during the year and those who actually failed the year, the former having lower initial confidence than the successful students in many skills, while the latter were more confident than the successful ones particularly in their communication skills. It is interesting to speculate whether the higher skills confidence of the students who failed the year was over-confidence, and whether, because they felt so confident, they did not concentrate sufficiently on their studies.

The overall high level of skills confidence is consistent with previous research.The male supremacy in number skills was also found by [START_REF] Murphy | The Skills of Students entering Higher Education[END_REF], but, unlike them, this later study found no gender difference for IT skills nor for most communication skills. It may be that IT is ceasing to be seen as a male preserve, at least for prospective business school students.The finding that students with greater prior work experience showed no higher confidence in their skills is unlikely to imply that the work did not allow development of these types of skill, but either that work experience may have made students more aware of their skill limitations, or that students were not aware of the extent to which they were developing transferable skills at work.

The link between the strength in the theorist learning style and success in accounting is consistent with the findings of [START_REF] Marriott | Student Learning Style Preferences and Undergraduate Academic Performance at Two UK Universities[END_REF]; the link between high scores on the reflective scale and higher marks in non-quantitative subjects is new.The negative correlation between high scores on the activist scale and academic performance for all subject areas and all types of assessment goes further than the findings of [START_REF] Sangster | Objective Tests, Learning to Learn and Learning Styles[END_REF], who found such correlation only for objective tests; however, his study involved second year students whereas first years have had less chance to adapt their learning styles to the demands of university assessment.

Although based on a reasonably large group of students, the results are from a single intake. They are also only for business school undergraduate students, and from a single university. For future research it would useful to ascertain whether the same danger/success factors apply to later intakes, to other student groups, in other subject areas and at other types of university. Attendance data, not reliably kept for this student group, or other measures of learner engagement would be useful factors to include in future investigations.

It would also be interesting to determine what aspects of first year university learning are so adversely affected by these factors and what changes to the first year experience would help to address the problem. For example, would a change of teaching or assessment approach help the activists do better, and can concentration on developing time management, self-reliance and teamwork skills improve student retention? Would very early formative assessment address over-confidence in written communication? Early indications in later years at this university are that merely alerting students to the danger factors is sufficient to concentrate the minds of those with activist learning styles and to make most students think harder about the need to develop their skills.

The use of skills confidence is a snapshot of the students' feelings on a particular day -in this case the start of the students' second week at university. It is prone to dependence on their worries and experiences in the preceding week of their course. It would be valuable to compare how their confidence changes over those crucial first few days or weeks of their university course. The analysis has also treated the responses as being on an interval scale, although comparisons with use of the median responses rather than the mean suggest that there is no real problem here.

Another specific area for future research would be to investigate the reasons behind the finding that students who owned their own home or lived in privately rented accommodation were less likely to pass, across all age groups.

Implications for practice

The main implications for practice to be taken from this research are:

1. Students with a highly activist learning style are less likely to succeed in first year. Such students should be made aware of this, and encouraged to develop their other learning styles, as well as to plan their learning to take account of their identified strengths and weaknesses. This strategy, undertaken with the next year's cohort of students at the same university, was seen to successfully spur many activists on in their studies: activists like challenges! 2. Lecturers should be aware of the potential problems and needs of students with different learning styles, and plan the learning opportunities they provide appropriately. Some ideas for appealing to different learning styles are given in [START_REF] Honey | The Manual of Learning Styles[END_REF]2006).A useful summary appears in the Campaign for Learning web page. 3. The relationship between learning styles and skills confidence suggests the generic skills that various styles of learner feel that they need support in, and hence can guide the type of activity planned. For instance, it would appear that first year students with high reflector scores feel least confident in their spoken communication so activities could be planned to suit that type of learner. Similarly, time management development activities could be planned to suit those who prefer an activist or a theorist learning style. [START_REF] Honey | The Manual of Learning Styles[END_REF], contains some ideas.) 4. Students who rate themselves with good skills in self-reliance, time management, and teamwork are likely to do better in first year at university. Provision aimed at helping students to develop these skills during first year may help to improve performance overall. In the university where this study took place, it has been found beneficial to alert new students to the importance of these skills. Helping students to reflect on their skills can form part of personal development planning [START_REF] Graham | Personal and Professional Development Planning[END_REF]. 5. Surprisingly, work experience prior to entering university does not seem to affect either students' confidence in their skills nor their first year success. It may be that many students do not recognize that they can develop transferable skills through their employment. Therefore, raising students' awareness of this and encouraging them to reflect on the skills they are learning through their part-time work may be advantageous for all students. [START_REF] Davies | Why Kick the "L" Out of Learning? The Development of Students' Employability Skills Through Part-time Working[END_REF], in the DfEE funded project 'Working for Skills' where materials were developed to help students recognize and develop the employability skills that they are gaining through their part-time work, found that having the materials opened 'students' eyes … to the value of their existing skills'. The Higher Education Academy Employability pages offer some valuable tools and resources. 6. Students who arrived at university feeling very confident in all the study skills did not do as well as those who recognized the need to improve in some areas, particularly in written skills. Very early formative assessment of students' written skills, with good feedback, might allow them a more realistic perception of their actual standard in this area before any damage is done by over-confidence. 7. Underperformance of male students occurred mainly in those who entered with high confidence in their study skills and attended badly at tutorials. Early tutorial activities aimed specifically at challenging these students might be worth considering.

This study has concentrated only on generic skills, learning style scores and demographic factors. As evidenced by the literature discussed earlier, success in university first year is a complex issue and many other less tangible issues are involved. Even the best regression model found in this study only explains 25 per cent of the variation in student performance. The significant factors explaining success were found to be a combination of low activist score, high initial confidence in the skills of self-reliance, time management and teamwork, and low initial confidence in written communication. Research following up the withdrawals and failures to identify how these factors link to the reasons given for withdrawal (such as academic personal or financial difficulties, or dissatisfaction with the university experience) would add further to the understanding of success at university in the first year.

Figure 1

 1 Figure 1 Mean responses to detailed skills questionnaire

Figure 2

 2 Figure 2 Mean skill self ratings (at start of the year) by student progression status

Table 1 Significant correlations between LSQ scores and skills confidence

 1

	Activist	Reflector	Pragmatist	Theorist
	High scores significantly positively correlated with:
	Spoken	Time	Setting & achieving	Problem solving
	communication	management	goals (p ϭ 0.008)	(p ϭ 0.001)
	(p ϭ 0.000)	(p ϭ 0.009)	Time	Setting &
	Teamwork		management	achieving goals
	(p ϭ 0.000)		(p ϭ 0.016)	(p ϭ 0.007)
	Written		Problem solving	Spoken
	communication		(p ϭ 0.018)	communication
	(p ϭ 0.048)		Spoken	(p ϭ 0.034)
	Getting help &		communication
	info (p ϭ 0.050)		(p ϭ 0.022)
			Numeric
			(p ϭ 0.026)
	High scores significantly negatively correlated with:
		Spoken
		communication
		(pϭ0.012)

Acknowledgement

The authors wish to acknowledge the assistance of Jennifer Graham, Ros Sutherland and Jenny Westwood of Napier University in the design of this survey.