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Over the past twenty years, global research on online learning in higher education has consistently reported significantly lower programme completion rates for online students compared with face?to?face learners. Economic, technological, pedagogical, and equity aspirations have driven the shift to online learning, yet low completion rates continue to affect students, staff, institutional ratings, employers, and funders. Researchers attempting to improve completion rates through curriculum design and teaching innovations, have achieved only marginal gains. Recently, evidence has suggested a possible causal relationship between student wellbeing and programme completion. This emerging direction includes trialling targeted wellbeing interventions. This study reports on the investigation of a Universal Wellbeing Evaluation and Literacy Intervention (UWEL) programme. Underpinned by the evidence-based Universal Wellbeing Model (UWM) and incorporating a new Universal Wellbeing Evaluation Tool (UWET), the study hypothesised that the UWEL Intervention could increase completion rates by 8–30%. Results show a 94% completion rate for the experimental group compared with 51% for the control group—a 43% difference. These findings demonstrate the potential for standardised wellbeing intervention programmes to substantially increase global higher education online learning completion rates.
Stevenson et al. (Sat,) studied this question.