Games and Gaming and Effective Practices

Student retention within Universities is becoming more important as the Government is targeting 50 percent of 18 to 30 year olds to experience higher education before 2010 in the UK. The need to integrate new students from different economical and social backgrounds has made student induction and integration to academic life more important that ever [1]. Student drop out rates throughout the UK for the year 2002/03 was 15.4 percent for mature students and 7.8 percent for young students [2]. The University of Ulster drop out rate for the year 2002/03 was 12.8 percent overall combining both groups of young and mature students. It is against this background of student retention rates that this project has been undertaken.