scholarly journals Bringing a Learning Strategies Project to Scale in a First-Year Seminar

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-44
Author(s):  
Hillary Steiner ◽  
Nirmal Trivedi ◽  
Joshua Brown

This paper describes the impact of a learning strategies intervention conducted in first-year seminar courses that, 1) disaggregated components of academic skills into meaningful components for first-year students, 2) taught students academic skills within an authentic context, and 3) scaled-up the intervention for implementation at a programmatic level. This work is grounded in research on metacognition, self-regulation, and motivation, as well as literature on the academic transition to college. Results reinforced earlier findings indicating significant improved use of metacognitive learning strategies, even when the intervention was expanded to include multiple instructors in multiple course sections. Further research is needed to determine the precise factors precipitating improvement when the project was brought to scale.

Author(s):  
Kathy L. Guthrie

The Service Leadership Seminar program at Florida State University is a unique way to assist first-year students with their transition to college while enabling them to continue their commitment to service and leadership. This article explores the impact the Service Leadership Seminar has on students through a mixed methods approach. The Socially Responsible Leader Scale showed a positive shift in students' consciousness of self. Through focus groups, students reported this program as being helpful in their transition and development of personal identities.


Author(s):  
Dianna Z. Rust ◽  
Ryan Korstange

First-Year Seminar (FYS) or First-Year Experience (FYE) courses help college students transition to college, learn valuable academic skills, and create successful habits. This research analyzes the benefit of reorganizing FYS curriculum around reflection and integrative learning, by comparing students who participated in this redesigned curriculum with those who participated in a skills-based, extended orientation first-year seminar course. The two groups were compared on several measures, including perception about the utility of reflective and integrative thinking, first year retention, and first year GPA. Our findings suggest that prioritizing reflection and integrative learning in a FYS seminar is beneficial.


Author(s):  
Stephanie M. Foote

The purpose of this multi-campus study was to determine how participating in a first-year seminar impacts students during the first semester of college. In the years since the first credit-bearing first-year seminar was offered at Reed College in 1911 (Gordon & Grites, 1984), many campuses have created seminars that address a variety of subject matter and meet the needs of an institution and its students. The customized nature of contemporary seminars has caused much of the course assessment and research to focus on measuring the impact of these institution-specific courses on retention (Porter & Swing, 2006). Qualitative methods were used in this study to identify additional ways first-year seminar participation influences the early college experience of students enrolled in the course. The study found that participating in a first-year seminar contributed to students' feelings of confidence in academic skills and abilities, as well as the connections they developed with their peers and seminar instructor. Several aspects of the first-year seminars in this study, including the content and ways in which the course was taught, were found to contribute to the perceptions of the participants.


Author(s):  
Diarmaid Lane ◽  
Sheryl Sorby

AbstractIn recent years, there has been a surge in research in spatial thinking across the international community. We now know that spatial skills are malleable and that they are linked to success across multiple disciplines, most notably Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). While spatial skills have been examined by cognitive scientists in laboratory environments for decades, current research is examining how these skills can be developed in field-based environments. In this paper, we present findings from a study within a Technology Teacher preparation programme where we examined first-year students’ spatial skills on entry to university. We explain why it was necessary to embed a spatial skills intervention into Year 1 of the programme and we describe the impact that this had on students’ spatial scores and on academic performance. The findings from our study highlight a consistent gender gap in spatial scores at the start of the first-year with female students entering the Technology Teacher preparation programme at a lower base level than male students. We describe how we integrated spatial development activities into an existing course and how an improvement in spatial scores and overall course performance was observed. The paper concludes by discussing the long-term sustainability of integrating spatial interventions within teacher preparation programmes while also highlighting the importance of future research to examine spatial skills as a fundamental component of technological capability.


Author(s):  
Sri Ariani ◽  
Tri Setianingsih

This research aims to find out Is there any significant differences between the impact of traditional teaching method and using Index Card Match in teaching English vocabulary at the First Year Students of SMA HANG TUAH 3 MATARAM and to find out does using Index Card Match have a positive effect on students’ vocabulary knowledge. The sample of this research is 40 students. The kind of this research is experimental research. The students are divided into two groups such as experimental group and control group. Then the research subjects are pre-tested to know their prior vocabulary mastery. After the treatment, the sample is post-tested to know their recent vocabulary mastery as the result of the treatment. The scores in both pre-test and post-test are taken as the main data of the research. The data is analyzed by using t-test.


2017 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 44-54
Author(s):  
Ruth V. Walker ◽  
Alexandra I. Zelin ◽  
Carolyn Behrman ◽  
Rachel Strnad

University-based academic advising at a large, Great Lakes state institution was designed to support first-year students' transition to college. We conducted individual interviews and facilitated story circles with 162 students to determine their perceived effectiveness of advising. Analyses revealed four overarching themes: student difficulty making the distinction between roles of high school guidance counselors and postsecondary academic advisors, advisor communication, student desire for a relationship, and advisor accessibility. On the basis of data gathered, we developed a model for understanding the formation and maintenance of student advising perceptions.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 323-339
Author(s):  
Natalia Yevheniivna Dmitrenko ◽  
Iuliia Oleksiivna Budas

The present paper provides the results of the feedback influence on students’ autonomous ESP learning. It is aimed to study the impact of feedback on autonomous learning outcomes of first-year students, who are studying a two-year university course of “English for Specific Purposes (ESP)”, the significant part of which is dedicated to self-regulated learning. The aim of the course is to improve the students’ proficiency in professionally oriented English communication to the level of B2 according to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). The investigation has proved the importance of teachers’ support in students’ autonomous ESP learning. The outcomes of those students who received the feedback regularly signify that even being self-sufficient, students strive for teachers’ or peer observation and feedback in the educational process. In the article, the interdependence between the level of students’ autonomous ESP learning competence and students’ feedback literacy is presented. The results of the study suggest that students’ autonomous ESP learning outcomes are considerably influenced by supportive external written feedback if it is sought, and their feedback literacy level is at least moderate or higher. A higher level of students’ feedback literacy is observed among students with a more advanced level of autonomous ESP learning competence and who demonstrate better academic achievements in professionally oriented English communication. The coherence of the elaborated levels of Ukrainian students’ feedback literacy and the ways of its enhancing can be significant for educators in other countries.


Author(s):  
Muhammad Iksan ◽  
Dirham Dirham

The aims of this research were: (1) to investigate the students’ motivations, (2) to investigate the language learning strategies (LLSs) that are used by the students, (3) to investigate the level of students’ LLSs usage, and (4) to investigate the influence of the students’ motivations and the level of students’ LLSs usage towards their English competence. This research gave descriptions about the students’ motivations, LLSs that are used by the students, and the level of students’ LLSs usage. The sample of this research was 111 students that were taken from three classes of the first year students from three study programs, i.e. Ilmu Ekonomi, Manajemen, and Akuntansi. This research revealed that the students were categorized into high motivated to learn English where 70 students (63%) had high motivation, 25 students (23%) had very high motivation, 13 students (12%) had medium motivation, and 3 students (3%) had low motivation. This research also found that the students were dominantly used metacognitive strategies (44%), followed by compensation strategies (18%), affective strategies (14%), social strategies (10%), cognitive strategies (8%), and the least used strategies were memory strategies (6%). For the level of the students’ language learning strategies usage, the researcher found that the students level were categorized into medium, where 78 students (70%) mediumly used the LLSs, 30 students (27%) highly used the LLSs, 2 students (2%) lowly used the LLSs, and 1 student (1%) very highly used the LLSs.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonas Willems ◽  
Liesje Coertjens ◽  
Vincent Donche

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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