FFYE Forum: First Year Transition – what works and how can we work better together | 29 May

Our next FFYE forum explores the topic of student transition success in their first year of study – what works and how we can work better together within curricular and across co-curricular and extra-curricular practices. Successful Student Transition is Everybody’s business! 

The new Higher Education Support Act, which links the HES (2021) Domain 1  Student Participation and Attainment, requires us to demonstrate how we support all students to be successful in their learning and achieve their potential. Alongside this, the HE Accord challenges universities to deliver on higher education participation targets for students from equity groups to achieve parity by 2035. 

Kathy Egea and Jacqueline Melvold wrote in the 2022 First Year Transition (blog) ‘Students thrive when the learning process is authentic, engaging, purposeful, explicit, relational, and inclusive. The first-year curriculum, when designed intentionally, plays an integral part in assisting students’ development, belonging and engagement. It needs to:    

• be foundational,   
• foster student identity and sense of belonging through involvement and connection in the university and its people (peers, educators, and wider community), and 
• facilitate the delivery of just-in-time, just-for-me tailored support, unpacking the ‘hidden’ rules and expectations of the learning process’. 

In this Forum, our colleagues from Charles Sturt University (CSU) Retention Team, Kelly Linden, Noelia Roman, Sarah Teakel and Neil van de Ploeg, will explain their national award-winning whole-of-institution approach to supporting students to succeed in first year. Their presentation will cover (i) embedding best-practice transition pedagogy with intentional design of first year units (ii) pre-census outreach support for disengaged students who do not submit an early assessment item and (iii) embedded tutor support in key first-year subjects. You can read their AAUT Program Award Abstract (Page 27), and the big CSU picture can be found at Student Retention and Success Framework. 

Activities are planned to view our own practice at UTS across our curricular, co-curricular and extra-curricular spaces and relate these practices to those from CSU. Our aim is to provide participants a space to consider the student experience, share/discuss and reflect on practice, and hopefully generate new ideas to enhance the way we support students to have a better transition into and through their first year of study. 

Please join us for another fabulous online FFYE forum. Everyone in the student transition space is especially welcome.

Kathy Egea  (UTS FFYE Coordinator) and Luke Sharp (FASS FFYE Transition Coordinator)  

What is the UTS FFYE Program?

The UTS FFYE (First and Further Year Experience) Program is an institutional-wide program designed to support the successful transition of students in their journey through their degrees and into the workplace. The program has three foci: curriculum, people and the university infrastructure, drawing from community and connection in collaboration with academic and professional staff.

One key element of the program is community building. FFYE Forums (regular meetings) and the FFYE community (MSTeams) provide spaces for sharing, learning, and ongoing collaborations that connect research, practice, and student experience. Contact Kathy Egea (FFYE coordinator) to join.

Register for this event

Your video, audio and the meeting chat transcript may be recorded or photographed. Please advise the facilitator if you do not wish to be recorded or photographed.

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