scholarly journals The First Year Experience: A Comparison of Institution Led Approaches to the Orientation and Engagement of First Year Students in Higher Education

2013 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-75
Author(s):  
Lynn Burnett ◽  
Stephen Larmar
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
First Year Experience ◽  
First Year ◽  
First Year Students

scholarly journals Selective Planning of the First Year Experience in Higher Education: A Sweden-Australia Comparative Study of Support

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 128
Author(s):  
Michael Christie ◽  
Sorrel Penn-Edwards ◽  
Sharn Donnison ◽  
Ruth Greenaway
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
First Year Experience ◽  
Fourth Generation ◽  
First Year ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
First Year Students ◽  
Satellite Campus ◽  
First Case ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
The University

Literature on the support of the First Year Experience (FYE) in institutions of Higher Education provides a range of modelled approaches. However, we argue that institutions still need to selectively plan which approach/es and attendant strategies are best suited to their particular contexts and institutional policy and practice frameworks and how their FYE is to be presented for their particular student cohort. This paper compares different ways of supporting students in their first year in two contrasting universities. The first case study focuses on a first year course at Stockholm University (SU), Sweden, a large, metropolitan, single campus institution, while the second investigates a strategy for supporting first year students using a community of practice at a satellite campus of the University of the Sunshine Coast (USC), a small regional university in South-East Queensland, Australia. The research contrasts a formal, first generation support approach versus a fourth generation support approach which seeks to involve a wider range of stakeholders in supporting first year students. The research findings draw conclusions about how effective the interventions were for the students and provide clear illustrations that selective planning in considering the institution’s strategic priorities and human, physical, and resource contexts was instrumental in providing a distinctive experience which complemented the institute and the student cohort. (212 words)

scholarly journals First-Year Students and the Framework: Using Topic Modeling to Analyze Student Understanding of the Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education

2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 51-69
Author(s):  
Melissa Harden
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Information Literacy ◽  
Topic Modeling ◽  
Topic Model ◽  
Student Understanding ◽  
First Year Experience ◽  
First Year ◽  
First Year Students ◽  
Assigned Reading ◽  
The Impact

Abstract Objective – The Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education has generated a significant amount of discussion among academic librarians; however, few have discussed the potential impact on learning when students interact directly with the Framework itself. At the University of Notre Dame, over 1,900 first-year students completed an information literacy assignment in their required first-year experience course. Students read a condensed version of the Framework, then wrote a response discussing how a frame of their choosing was reflected in an assigned reading. The goal of this exploratory study was to determine if the students demonstrated an understanding of the themes and concepts in the Framework based on this assignment. Methods – Topic modeling, a method for discovering topics contained in a corpus of text, was used to explore the themes that emerged in the students’ responses to this assignment and assess the degree to which they connect to frames in the Framework. The model receives no information about the Framework prior to the analysis; it only uses the students’ words to form topics. Results – The responses formed several topics that are recognizable as related to the frames from the Framework, suggesting that students were able to engage effectively and meaningfully with the language of the Framework. Because the topic model does not know anything about the Framework, the fact that the responses formed topics that are recognizable as frames suggests that students internalized the concepts in the Framework well enough to express them in their own writing. Conclusion – This research provides insight regarding the impact that the Framework may have on student understanding of information literacy concepts.

scholarly journals Fostering Retention in Online Higher Education: Students’ Perceptions of an Intervention Addressing their First-Year Experience

2020 ◽  
pp. 389-397
Author(s):  
Marlon Xavier ◽  
Julio Meneses
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Academic Advising ◽  
First Year Experience ◽  
First Year ◽  
Continuous Assessment ◽  
Related Factors ◽  
First Year Students ◽  
Online Higher Education ◽  
Intervention Measures

Dropout represents one of the greatest challenges faced by online higher education. This paper presents an institutional intervention aimed at fostering retention and success of first-year undergraduate students at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), an online and open University, through measures addressing learning design and academic support. Secondly, through analysing in-depth interviews with first-year students, the paper explores their perception of intervention measures and their possible advantages or risks. Results indicate that time-related factors represent the major issue for persistence and continuance. Intervention measures such as personalized course packages which prevent overlapping of submission deadlines; flexibility in continuous assessment; and personalized support and academic advising were valued highly by most students. Future retention interventions in open universities are also discussed.

A FIRST-YEAR STUDENTS’ ADAPTATION TO DIFFICULTIES AT HIGH EDUCATIONAL ESTABLISHMENTS

2021 ◽  
pp. 97-113
Author(s):  
Nailya R. Salikhova ◽  
◽  
Aida R. Fakhrutdinova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Personal Growth ◽  
Personal Development ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
Educational Process ◽  
First Year ◽  
First Year Students ◽  
Social Community ◽  
Transition To Higher Education ◽  
Study Participants

Data from an empirical study aimed at identifying the difficulties faced by students in their transition to higher education, the overcoming of which is important for personal development, are presented in the article. The study participants (n=179) were asked to describe the difficulties of transition from school to University in the 1st year based on analysis of their autobiographical memory. The content analysis of texts allowed identifying the main themes and compiling a list of challenges, and then the frequency of occurrence of each of them was determined. According to the results, the most actual difficulties are the different aspects of integrating into the new social community due to sharp changes in the social environment during the transition from school to University. A big challenge is the need for self-organization in educational and everyday matters, planning and organizing your time. The third most frequently mentioned is learning difficulties, especially those related to mastering the material in the new educational environment. Problematic areas of adaptation to higher education that have not been previously reflected in the sources are the establishment of a common life in the dormitory, pressure from parents, the manifestation of their individuality, the increase in the length of classes and the pace of learning, romantic relationships and language barriers. The difficulties of the first examination session are much less frequently mentioned, and are more frequently mentioned when examining the current adaptation process. The results of the study can be used for the development and subsequent implementation of a system of practical measures aimed at helping students to adapt to the new environment and conditions. Such assistance to students in building a new way of life at a university, especially at an early stage of study, is necessary not only to improve the effectiveness of the educational process, but also to facilitate the processes of personal growth and development of students

Japan: The "Haves" are Gaining and the "Have-Nots" are Losing

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yoshiaki Obara
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Higher Education Institutions ◽  
Private Higher Education ◽  
First Year ◽  
Prospective Students ◽  
Risk Of Falling ◽  
First Year Students ◽  
Rural Colleges ◽  
Negative Cycle ◽  
Rural Institutions

Many Japanese private higher education institutions also face a risk of falling into the "losing group." It seems that small/rural colleges end up receiving less extra income from admissions over the tei-in (the quota for first-year students) level. This loss creates less scholarship money for capable students. The small/rural institutions are likely to lose prospective students as a negative cycle works against them. This tendency, in turn, augments the opportunities available to large, metropolitan higher education institutions. In Japan, a clear division is anticipated, with the larger institutions getting much larger and the smaller and rural ones getting much smaller. This is a hard fact that we will face in the foreseeable future.

scholarly journals Personality traits and academic performance: Correcting self-assessed traits with vignettes

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. e0248629
Author(s):  
Johan Coenen ◽  
Bart H. H. Golsteyn ◽  
Tom Stolp ◽  
Dirk Tempelaar
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Personality Traits ◽  
Student Performance ◽  
Cognitive Skills ◽  
Risk Preference ◽  
Emotional Stability ◽  
First Year ◽  
First Year Students ◽  
Significant Relationships ◽  
Point Estimates

In this study, we investigate whether Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability and Risk Preference relate to student performance in higher education. We employ anchoring vignettes to correct for heterogeneous scale use in these non-cognitive skills. Our data are gathered among first-year students at a Dutch university. The results show that Conscientiousness is positively related to student performance, but the estimates are strongly biased upward if we use the uncorrected variables. We do not find significant relationships for Emotional Stability but find that the point estimates are larger when using the uncorrected variables. Measured Risk Preference is negatively related to student performance, yet this is fully explained by heterogeneous scale use. These results indicate the importance of using more objective measurements of personality traits.

scholarly journals SOCIOCULTURAL ADAPTATION OF FIRST-YEAR STUDENTS IN THE MODERN SYSTEM OF HIGHER EDUCATION

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 4-8
Author(s):  
L.V. Annikova ◽  
◽  
T.V. Bakhutashvili ◽  
E.V. Ilchenko ◽  
◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
First Year ◽  
Sociocultural Adaptation ◽  
First Year Students ◽  
Modern System

scholarly journals Entering Higher Professional Education: Unveiling First-Year Students’ Key Academic Experiences and Their Occurrence Over Time

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonas Willems ◽  
Liesje Coertjens ◽  
Vincent Donche
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Professional Education ◽  
Critical Incident ◽  
Transition Process ◽  
Academic Experiences ◽  
First Year ◽  
Study Program ◽  
First Year Students ◽  
Academic Transition ◽  
First Semester

To date, little understanding exists of how first-year students in professionally oriented higher-education (HE) programs (i.e., those that provide vocational education to prepare students for a particular occupation) experience their academic transition process. In the present study, we first argued how the constructs of academic adjustment and academic integration can provide complementary perspectives on the academic transition of first-year students in (professional) HE. Next, we examined what first-year students in professional HE contexts perceive to be the most important experiences associated with their academic transition process in the first semester of their first year of higher education (FYHE). To this end, we adopted the fundamentals of the critical incident technique and asked 104 students in a Flemish (Dutch-speaking part of Belgium) university college (which offers professional HE programs, such as nursing) to complete “reflective logs” with open questions at the start of the second semester of their FYHE, wherein they reflected on three critical academic experiences during their first semester. An inductive, cross-case content analysis of the collected narratives showed that students reported on nine themes of academic experiences, which relate to five adjustment themes (dealing with the organization of the study program, organizing study work, committing to the study, following class and taking notes, and processing learning content outside class) and four integration themes (feeling competent, feeling stressed, feeling prepared, and feeling supported). Further analyses showed that although some of the nine themes of academic experiences appear to be more important at different times in the first semester, they all seem to be meaningful throughout the whole semester.

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