Supporting students in their transition to university studies:
Introduction: One of UNSW's objectives in delivering Educational Excellence is to admit the most talented students "irrespective of background or socioeconomic status". While these students should have the necessary aptitude to succeed at tertiary study, they may require support in their transition to university in order for them to successfully complete their degree programs and reach their full potential. One important aspect of dealing with the difficulties which some students face in transitioning to university is reducing the students' sense of isolation and helping them feel that they belong to a learning community. Other students find that they are lacking self-management capabilities and require additional support in this area in order to succeed at their university studies. This project will identify issues relating to first-year students' transition to university studies that are detrimental to their learning and well-being (via a literature review and audit of existing strategies used across Schools at UNSW), as well as devising and trialling transition support strategies to improve their experience.
Aims: This project aims to improve student experience for those involved in the implementation of the trial transition support strategies. In particular, it will address issues of equity and diversity by helping students, including those whose backgrounds or socio-economic status make them more likely to require additional support to ensure a successful transition to university studies, to feel that they are valued members of their learning communities. It also aims to provide them with the self-management capability needed for them to cope with university studies.
Progress / Outcomes / Next steps
Progress so far includes: employed research assistant; gained ethics approval for staff and student surveys; entered UNSW Canberra student transition survey data; conducted literature review on transition issues and strategies as identified in existing literature; audit of existing transition strategies across UNSW Schools underway; planning of transition support strategies.
Next steps include: completing literature review report; completing staff interviews across UNSW Schools; report summarizing findings of audit; implement trials of transition support strategies; report on successful and unsuccessful trial transition support strategies; produce “how to” guides for successful strategies; extend trials in other UNSW Schools.
Trial transition support strategies include: networking events with alumni speakers, students and academic (and perhaps military) staff; video transition advice from upper level students; increased integration of self-management capability development within the curriculum (eg. study skills, time management, expectation management); increased focus on curricular design and delivery strategies to support student transition.
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UNSW Healthy Universities Initiative (HUI):
The aim of the UNSW HUI is to enhance student and staff self-management, success and wellbeing at UNSW.
The HUI was proposed as a SEA project in 2018. It is co-led by Nalini Pather, Jacquelyn Cranney, Leesa Sidhu and Gary Velan, and has strong input from our SEA Fellows as well as many non-Fellows in the EF and non-EF communities including Sue Morris, Jenny Richmond and Rebecca LeBard.
A major focus has been on curricular approaches to supporting student wellbeing. PVCE created an SEA webpage for HUI (https://www.education.unsw.edu.au/teaching/scientia-education-academy/unsw-healthy-universities-initiative), which links to the UNSW Teaching HUI website (https://teaching.unsw.edu.au/HealthyUni). This website houses most of the relevant resources, including reference to the EF Student Wellbeing CoP, with whom we have been collaborating for the past year. The Student Wellbeing CoP generously shared some of their project officer time for joint activities.
In late 2019, UNSW became an international partner to the Advance HE (https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/) project, Embedding Mental Wellbeing in the Curriculum, led by Sally Bradley. The HUI co-leaders became the Local Leads for this project.
EF Student Wellbeing CoP Curriculum project:
A subgroup of Student wellbeing CoP members, led by Leesa (and supported by Jacky Cranney and the HUI co-leaders), pooled our late 2020 professional development resources to provide project officer support for designing, delivering and evaluating curricular strategies to support student wellbeing in their courses. The expected outcome in 2021 is a case study description that can be used for individual professional development activities such as applications for Advance HE Fellowship, promotion, teaching awards (thus also relevant to myEducation Portfolio), and possibly SoTL publication.
