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The Australian Centre for Student Equity and Success acknowledges Indigenous peoples across Australia as the Traditional Owners of the lands on which the nation’s campuses are situated. With a history spanning more than 60,000 years as the original educators, Indigenous peoples hold a unique place in our nation. We recognise the importance of their knowledge and culture, and reflect the principles of participation, equity, and cultural respect in our work. We pay our respects to Elders past, present, and future, and consider it an honour to learn from our Indigenous colleagues, partners, and friends.

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You are reading: The Impact of Non-Participating Enrolments (NPE) Withdrawal Campaign on Non-Participating Enrolments: A randomised trial

Trial overview

Registered
Users Priority Students: Low socio-economic status backgrounds, Identifies with at least one equity category
Academic Cap Stage of Intervention: During Higher Education
Chart Line Outcomes: Progression

What was trialed

The Non-Participating Enrolments (NPE) Withdrawal Campaign identifies highly disengaged online students and provides early intervention to minimise the obstacles in the withdrawal process.

The Student Support team examines currently enrolled online students and identifies “highly disengaged” students as those who were enrolled but did not participate in their previous study period.

The intervention provided through the NPE Withdrawal Campaign particularly focuses on students who may have limited supports to help them navigate the higher education systems, such as first-in-family; and those students from low socioeconomic backgrounds, who may be impacted greatest by accumulating financial debt and failing grades.

The intervention will engage these students, initially through an Student Relationship Engagement System (SRES) email, offering the opportunity to consider withdrawal prior to census date. This email will link to primary support services and specific Open Universities Australia (OUA) processes through the university Customer Relationship Management portal, to enable easier withdrawal by linking up multiple student management systems. Students who do not respond by the outlined due date will receive two attempted phone calls from the Student Support team to discuss their options, and a final SRES email. This same campaign will be applied prior to census date (the withdrawal date that will not incur course fees), and for those who remain enrolled, the same campaign will be applied prior to academic census (the withdrawal date that will not result in academic penalties). There will be a final campaign for those identified throughout the study period as NPE, who have been automatically enrolled by OUA in the following study period, to ensure they are aware of their future enrolment for consideration before commencing.

The NPE Withdrawal Campaign is expected to benefit NPE students, particularly those from first-in-family and low socioeconomic backgrounds, and result in greater withdrawals prior to incurring financial and academic penalties.

What was found

Results are expected in April 2026.

How the trial was delivered

A randomised controlled trial (RCT) is being used to determine the impact of the NPE Withdrawal Campaign among online students.

After online students are identified as NPEs, these students are randomly allocated to either receive the intervention (the intervention group) or not (the control group), ensuring equal allocation across those students identified as first-in-family and/or from low socioeconomic backgrounds. Those in the control group may receive the existing support available to them through the university.

University administrative data is used to determine the impact of the intervention on withdrawals (enrolment data). University administrative data is also used to determine if the intervention resulted in a secondary benefit for those NPEs who remain enrolled, improving assignment completions and pass rates for this cohort (Blackboard grade centre).

The trial is being undertaken at Curtin University, in Perth Western Australia, during OUA Study Periods 2 and 4 in 2025.