The impetus for supporting the development of students’ learning in higher education (HE) comes as a result of the impact of a range of factors affecting the profile of undergraduate students world-wide. In the UK, the widening participation agenda is a key driver that is predicated on the premise that ‘we cannot afford to waste talent simply because of a reluctance to foster it’ (HEFCE, 2006: 9). In seeking to address the discrepancies in the participation rates between different social classes, universities in the UK are offering fair access to HE to disabled students, mature students and men and women from all ethnic backgrounds. Modern universities (founded post- 1992) especially have found that large numbers of students now come from non-traditional backgrounds, and that there are difficulties associated with supporting and fostering learning where students’ prior educational experiences are very varied (Bamber and Tett, 2000; McInnis, 2001; Zeegers and Martin, 2001). There is little value for HE institutions in attracting students on to courses if they subsequently drop out of their studies, but the factors influencing attrition rates are both wide-ranging and complex.

The aim of this small-scale study is to explore the effectiveness of the support available to students registered for programmes of study in the School of Education. This includes the provision of university-wide student support and guidance services as well as the more localised study skills and academic and personal support provided by personal tutors. The perceptions of both staff and students were sampled through questionnaires and interviews. This paper presents a review of literature on the provision of student support for the increasingly diverse body of students in higher education and some preliminary findings from our survey of current students. The literature and findings from our investigation indicate discrepancies between the officially declared provision of student support services and the accessibility and use of these services in practice. There is ambiguity around the role of the personal tutor and inconsistency of practice in the level of support provided by ‘personal tutors’ which suggest that a review of the personal tutor role is needed. Student responses to our questionnaire also indicate that drop-in study skills provision in useful and being used but that other student support services, such as careers and counselling services are rarely used by students from the School of Education. This is mainly due to accessibility of these services and the lack of provision on the Walsall campus. The other major theme in the data is the process of induction to the University which students regard as being too intensive an ‘event’ and inappropriate for getting to know about support services.

The aims of the study were to use differentiated online learning material for use with a Level 1 statistics module for undergraduate sport students and examine relationships between student performance on differentiated tests and module performance. We developed the differentiated material by writing easy and hard multiple choice tests, with the harder tests having a shorter completion time and more choices. Each multiple choice test related to information available online and immediate feedback was provided on completion of the test. Results indicated that 85% of students accessed the module online, with 26% accessing difficult tests and 22% accessing easy tests. Correlation results indicated that module performance was significantly related to performance on the easy test (r = 0.27, P0.01) and also on the harder test (r = 0.26, P0.01). Findings suggest that lecturers should encourage students to engage with interactive material and that future research should explore methods to enhance students' independent learning skills.