Picture a student taking your module. They haven’t logged into the virtual learning environment (or VLE) for weeks. As module leader, you flag this student as “disengaged” or “problematic”. But what if you’ve got it wrong?
The long-awaited UK White Paper for post-16 education and skills sets ambitious targets to improve access to learning, boost participation and reduce skills shortages. It aims to steer education towards much needed upskilling, to meet the demands of the future workplace.
But here is what’s missing: what happens after students arrive?
With UK universities facing record dropout rates, the White Paper’s silence on retention is deafening. We’re obsessing over getting students in the door while ignoring why so many walk back out – and often, it’s because our teaching doesn’t account for personality-driven learning differences.
The late starters we misunderstand
Research has shown that learners differ not only in abilities and behaviours, but also in personality traits. The Big Five Indicator (BFI) reveals varying degrees of Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism, each driving different learning behaviours.
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Take students with high neuroticism. They often display anxious, deadline-driven and stress-reactive approaches to learning, so they easily get labelled as “late starters”, “last-minute learners” or “problematic students”.
Take Kay (not her real name), a student I encountered in my research. She’d barely touch course materials for weeks, then suddenly submit good-quality work, days before the deadline. Even though most staff labelled her a problematic, “last-minute learner”, she wasn’t lazy. Her high neuroticism meant she needed that deadline pressure to trigger her focus and produce her best work.
Learning from international practice
Finland’s universities use learning agreements, where students negotiate flexible deadlines based on their learning pace, with mandatory check-ins to prevent drift. Students aren’t penalised for needing different timelines; they’re supported through them. Australian universities have pioneered staged assessment models with compulsory formative checkpoints. Students must submit draft work for non-graded feedback before final deadlines.
These approaches help to catch different learner types early on. Delayed starters, in particular, can get early confidence-building; resource explorers receive guidance connecting their explorations to objectives, and collaborative learners get peer feedback structures.
The UK already has robust well-being support. We need to connect the dots, integrating academic flexibility with mental health awareness, and recognise that engagement patterns signal personality differences, not deficiency.
The “problematic” students who aren’t actually problematic
My empirical research with 72 learners in a software engineering module revealed something that challenges how we label students. By analysing VLE activity logs alongside Big Five personality assessments, I learned that roughly one-quarter of students – those we typically call “problematic learners” – may not be disengaged at all.
They are merely “delayed starters”: students showing higher neuroticism scores, lower participation in early weeks, but a striking 67 per cent increase in activity within 72 hours of assessment deadlines. The data revealed something unexpected. These weren’t necessarily lazy students, but anxiety-responsive learners showing systematic patterns of stress-triggered engagement.
Try comparing these high neuroticism students to their peers with different personality profiles. For example, students with high conscientiousness showed steady engagement and higher average performance. Those with high agreeableness participated 76 per cent more in forums and improved 12 per cent more from first to final assessment. Students with high openness accessed 3.2 times more optional materials.
But it’s the delayed starters who get labelled as problematic. They’re simply wired differently. These students don’t need fixing – they need different scaffolding.
What we need to do differently
My analysis revealed that early engagement predicts final performance, accounting for close to half of the variation in students’ final grades, and this relationship was established early on in the semester, creating a critical window for intervention. Here are three evidence-based interventions to support delayed starters.
Embed milestone-based assessments with low-threat checkpoints. The solution isn’t just earlier deadlines, it’s about better structures. For example, instead of one final essay worth 100 per cent, break it into staged submissions, such as a research proposal (20 per cent), draft sections (30 per cent) and a final submission (50 per cent). This way, each stage would provide manageable pressure points and opportunities for structured feedback. The key difference is where early checkpoints are formative, not penalising. They could reduce anxiety rather than compound it.
Use learning analytics to identify delayed starters early. When someone only logs in at midnight before the deadline every time, that’s not random chaos – it could be a delayed starter showing consistent patterns. The 67 per cent activity spike within 72 hours of deadlines is systematic, not chaotic. Early identification enables targeted support such as low-stakes quizzes in early weeks, peer discussions, reflection exercises and regular non-judgmental progress updates. These confidence-building activities help overcome initial hesitation without triggering avoidance behaviours. The goal is to help delayed starters calibrate effort without waiting for deadline panic.
Train academics to recognise and respond to these patterns. Give lecturers the tools and language to say: “I notice you tend to engage closer to deadlines, let’s build in earlier low-stakes checkpoints to support you,” rather than: “You need to have started earlier.”
This isn’t about lowering standards. These interventions remove anxiety barriers that have nothing to do with academic capability. Delayed starters’ improving performance would prove they’re capable, our structures just aren’t working with their stress-response patterns.
From policy to practice
The White Paper envisions a skilled, productive workforce. We can’t deliver that while losing a quarter of students who are delayed starters, capable learners misunderstood as problematic.
To deliver on these promises, we need to recognise that engagement patterns reflect personality differences, not deficiencies. Let’s look beyond participation metrics to completion rates and understand why students disengage.
Chathura Sooriya-Arachchi is a lecturer in computer science at the University of Westminster.
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