A digital tool for improving enrolment and completion rate of Masters' Studies

This paper presents a project, funded by Erasmus +, Strategic Partnership and conducted in by three European universities from; Sweden, Spain and the UK, in cooperation with a software company. The project aims to remediate the problem of masters' students who do not get their degree within the allocated time or even drop out from universities. The underlying cause is identified as students that have the formal prerequisites to register for a master's programme may still lack crucial previous knowledge and/or abilities to manage the studies. The suggested solution was to develop learning resource modules for four different master's programmes in Europe and create a HTML5-platform to house them. The modules are intended to illustrate the different abilities and level of previous knowledge that applicants are supposed to bring into their studies by a suitable entry profile for the master's course identified by lecturers. The access modules provides potential students with a self-assessment test divided in twelve parts. A visualization of the level of the twelve different skills or field of knowledge are then compared to the suitable entry profile for the master's course. Whenever weak spots in the prospective students´ ability are identified, the students are presented with a series of learning interventions designed to remedy flaws in their ability. The authors argue that the use of similar access modules could improve enrolment, completion rate, time-to-degree and retention in a wide range of educations.