WEEKEND READING: Stop inducting students into a system that doesn’t fit them

This blog was kindly authored by Professor Debbie Holley, Emerita Professor in Learning Innovation at Bournemouth University; Professor Wendy Garnham, Professor of Psychology at the University of Sussex; and Sue Beckingham, Associate Professorand Learning, Teaching and Assessment Lead in the School of Computing and Digital Technologies at Sheffield Hallan University.

Debbie, Wendy and Sue are all National Teaching Fellows and expert educators in technology and learning. All three sit on the National Pre-arrival Academic Questionnaire Working Group.

The companion blog to this is available here.

In this post, we offer our initial reflections on the findings from the first national Pre‑arrival Academic Questionnaire (PAQ) pilot – led by the University of East London (UEL) in collaboration with Advance HE and JISC, and funded by the Office for Students. The project is designed to generate a clearer, evidence‑based picture of students’ expectations, prior learning experiences and concerns before they enter higher education.

By capturing student perspectives before institutional norms and practices reshape them, the PAQ provides rare insight into how prepared – and under‑prepared – students feel for the academic, digital, and assessment demands they are about to encounter. Initial reflections from the project highlight significant mismatches between institutional assumptions and student realities, particularly around digital capability, assessment confidence, and expectations of teaching and support. Crucially, what the whole dataset from Phase One of the national Pre/Post-arrival Academic Questionnaire pilot has told us so far about incoming undergraduate students is that the PAQ reframes onboarding as a pedagogic challenge rather than an administrative one, positioning pre‑arrival data as a lever for more inclusive, responsive and humane transitions into higher education.

We know from HESA data that non-continuation levels of new entrants are substantial. This means that higher education has an onboarding problem: one of our own making.
We induct students into systems built for an imaginary, perfect learner.

We call it preparation, but new entrants can experience it as disorientation and feel that their prior experience is not being recognised.

We assume there is readiness on entry when, in fact, there is diversity, complexity and fragility amongst our new students.

And then we are surprised when some students struggle to belong, engage, or persist.

A broken assumption at the point of entry

In higher education, we have a tendency to continue to design learning and teaching induction as if students arrive ready to step onto a smooth, linear escalator towards academic success. They don’t. The data from Phase 1 of this national pilot, consisting of fifteen institutions across England, makes this abundantly clear. It also reinforces some of the findings reported in the Curriculum and Assessment Review report led by Professor Becky Francis entitled ‘Building a world-class curriculum for all’.

The  findings highlight that our current model of onboarding is not just outdated – it is actively misaligned with the prior learning experience of the students we now teach. The uncomfortable truth is that we are still inducting students into a system that reflects our traditional approaches and assumptions rather than their prior learning realities.

Students don’t want more tech. They want more humans

The most striking message from the PAQ is not a demand for innovation, flexibility, or cutting-edge digital tools. It is far simpler: students are used to and want human teaching, human feedback, and human connection. These findings that students particularly value in-person connection are reinforced in the HEPI and TechnologyOne’s report What Matters Most? 20 years of the student experience.

It is important for institutions to recognise that many students arrive from secondary and further education environments where learning is deeply relational. The findings show that teachers guide them through hard copy materials (e.g. handwritten notes, course textbook), feedback is immediate and dialogic – mostly through individual face-to-face interactions – and knowledge is mediated through communication. Students are used to absorbing information through hard copy.

VLE prior experience only constituted 31 per cent of all respondents. But when students arrive at higher education they find a VLE full of poorly signposted resources, a handful of induction sessions and a message that “it’s all online – go and find it.”  Professor Rose Luckin articulated the challenges in her blog for Advance HE entitled What incoming students actually know about AI .

We label this independent learning. They have come from a structured and scaffolded environment to one where students can feel confused and experience abandonment.

Nearly half of students prefer one-to-one, face-to-face feedback, something which the sector rarely offers as standard practice.

Yet we know that research into VLEs frequently describes the student experience as impersonal and isolating. When engagement drops, this is not resistance to innovation; it is a rejection of learning depersonalisation.

We have built a system on false assumptions

Higher education rests on deeply embedded assumptions about students – assumptions the PAQ data systematically dismantles.

Take digital competence. We behave as though students are ‘digital learning natives’, seamlessly navigating online platforms and learning environments because they may live and socialise digitally. In reality, most rely on handwritten or typed notes, engagement with digital materials such as e‑books is low, and familiarity with VLEs and collaboration tools is uneven.

Students are not digitally deficient – but they are digitally uneven and not enabled within the learning context. Yet success depends on navigating a complex digital ecosystem from day one. We can be very poor at teaching this, yet we often assume we are efficient at it.

The same pattern holds for assessment. Only a tiny proportion of students prefer exams (4 per cent). The majority associate them with anxiety, memory failure and stress. Yet exams remain dominant in many disciplines. We claim to be measuring learning; students experience us as measuring endurance under pressure. Our assessment systems reward familiarity as much as ability – and that should trouble anyone committed to equity.

The conveyor belt is a myth

Perhaps the most damaging assumption is that learning is linear. Curricula are designed as if students start at the same point, progress at the same pace and reach the same outcomes through the same pathway. This is pedagogically indefensible.

Learning is messy. It involves uncertainty, disruption, and threshold moments that cannot be scheduled neatly into a semester plan. PAQ data reinforces this reality: students arrive with vastly different prior experiences; expectations of contact time, workload and support vary widely; and many are balancing work, wellbeing and study in ways we consistently underestimate.

Yet our onboarding processes flatten this complexity into a single narrative. We place every student at the bottom of the same escalator – and then blame them when they stumble.

Generative AI is exposing the cracks

Generative AI is accelerating this misalignment. The sector is oscillating between panic that students are outsourcing thinking and overconfidence that they already know how to use these tools effectively. The PAQ suggests neither is true.Prior to arriving in higher education, thirty-nine per cent said they have no experience of using GenAI.

Students’ engagement with GenAI is uneven, often surface-level and rarely supported by critical or ethical understanding. Left unaddressed, this becomes another hidden curriculum, advantaging those who already know how to use these tools strategically. Used differently, GenAI could be transformative, but only if we shift from prohibition to pedagogy, from detection to design and from fear to literacy. We need to scaffold this prior to assessment. Most institutions are not there yet. As Professor Rose Luckin states in her blog looking at the Gen AI related PAQ data, it is important for us to understand.

So what needs to change?

If onboarding is where students first encounter the reality of higher education, it is also where we have the greatest opportunity – and responsibility – to change it. Not through incremental tweaks, but through a fundamental rethinking of purpose.

Five provocations for the sector follow:

1. Stop mistaking access to content for access to learning. Uploading materials to a VLE is not teaching if students cannot navigate, interpret, and engage with them.
2. Design induction as a pedagogic process, not an administrative one. A one‑week orientation is insufficient. Induction should be extended, embedded, and integrated into the curriculum.
3. Personalise entry points, not just outcomes. Pre‑arrival data like the PAQ offers the chance to meet students where they are – if institutions are willing to act on it.
4. Rethink assessment from the ground up. Early, scaffolded, low‑stakes assessment is not remedial; it is a condition of fairness.
5. Put human connection back at the centre of learning. In an era of AI and digital expansion, students’ message is clear: they want to feel seen, supported, and connected.

A question the sector can no longer avoid

The PAQ data does not tell us anything radically new to those of us who work in the learning and teaching sphere. What it does is remove our ability to look away. We can no longer claim students arrive prepared for the systems we have built, assume digital delivery equals learning, or pretend that one size fits all.

The real challenge is not whether we understand the evidence. It is whether we are prepared to redesign a system that works very well – for those it was always designed to serve.

Phase two next steps

A call for free participation in Phase two is currently taking place. If you are interested, you can contact: Jonathan Neves on [email protected]

Alternatively, please access this Jisc Surveys form to request participation. https://app.onlinesurveys.jisc.ac.uk/s/advance-he/pre-arrival-questionnaire-paq-national-pilot-wave-2-request