The final hurdle: a case study of an intervention to encourage and support students in their resit or resubmission

At The Open University, UK, students are offered the opportunity to re-submit the final assignment of a module they have failed but came close to passing. In order to improve pass and retention rates, enhanced support was offered to these students by the School of Languages and Applied Linguistics during the academic year 2017-18, helped by extra funding. The purpose of this paper is to report on this enhanced student support as a case study for the utility of others. A dedicated forum was set up on each module website with tutors engaged to moderate the forum between the results and the resubmission/resit date. Tutors were to produce documents to post and brief guidance webcasts, and the resultant upskilling and community sharing of good practice turned out to provide them with a significant professional development benefit. The intervention was tied in with SST (Student Support Team) activity. A comparison with previous and subsequent years of pass figures at the second chance indicates some success.