Supporting students from application to graduation

For learners, the university experience starts from the first point of contact. Delivering an outstanding student journey is a complex task that requires addressing a range of factors from start to finish. At a session, held in partnership with Boundless Learning at the 2025 THE Student Success UK&IE event, experts discussed how holistic higher education partnerships can bring together data analysis, technology and student support advisors to enhance the student experience.

Student success begins at enquiry, said Shireen Loonat, senior director of enrolment and retention at Boundless Learning. “We have merged the enrolment and retention teams because the journey is from the first moment students have any communication with the university. They are making an assessment of whether they are going to study with us or not,” she said.

At enquiry, each prospective student at Boundless Learning’s partner institutions has a conversation with an enrolment advisor about their motivations, drivers and hesitations. “Often there is a big mismatch with people’s understanding of what a qualification is going to do for them,” Loonat said. “Then we walk them through the application process,” Loonat said. 

The student is supported in collecting documents for processing and other administrative tasks. “Advisors tend to have relationships with people for a very long period of time. The most important step between the enrolment advisor and the student success advisor is this welcome and onboarding.” 

The person who helps the student enrol then hands them over to the dedicated team member who will provide pastoral care from the start until graduation. The two operational roles are relationship-focused, explained Loonat. Boundless Learning uses technology to ease administrative burdens and streamline this process. One such tool is agentic AI, which supports students with reminders and general communication.

All student data is collected centrally on the Boundless Learning platform, so support advisors can access their details at all times and look back at the concerns they have raised previously. 

This is especially important during the first module, said Loonat. “If you cannot retain them for that module, it is unlikely that they are coming back to study,” she said. It is vital that the student feels well supported and that the right tools and assets are in place.

Boundless Learning’s student success advisors are embedded within its partner institutions’ systems, explained Kim Foxwell, director of UK partnerships at the company. “We work within our partner frameworks, so we are learning management system agnostic. It is the same for the student support system, but it is always with a student in mind.” 

Foxwell concluded that technological advancements should be used to support higher education institutions in building a stronger human connection with students, regardless of whether they are online or on campus. 

The speakers:

• Kim Foxwell, director of UK partnerships, Boundless Learning
• Shireen Loonat, senior director of enrolment and retention, Boundless Learning

Find out more about Boundless Learning.