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Open professional development session for academics teaching first-year students

https://supportingstart.eu/

�Open professional development

session for academics

teaching first- year students

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MAKE A COPY

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DO NOT FORGET THE “SPEAKER NOTES”

Below many slides in this presentation there are “speaker notes” with more information, links, and resources that may be useful to you in understanding and going deeper into the presentation content.

Make sure to scroll to see them all!

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Open professional development session for academics teaching first-year students

https://supportingstart.eu/

�Open professional development session:

Survival kit for academics teaching

first-year students

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STRUCTURE OF THE SESSION

START project presentation

Students’ challenges

First-year students’ transition challenges
Work in small groups: reflecting on students’ challenges
“Post-it moment”

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Tools for academics teaching first-year students

Presentation of “work-in-progress” tools
Work in small groups: sharing experiences

Exit ticket

Here you find a general overview of the session’s structure.

In detail, the session was organised as follows:

1.- START project presentation (10 min)

Goals and results that the START project aims to achieve, making it clear that it is still a work-in-progress.

2.- Students’ challenges (40 min)

Presentation of first-year students’ transition challenges (10 min)

Presenting first-year students’ challenges (mind map).
Make academics aware of 10 identified student profiles and see if they find them relevant in their teaching.

Work in small groups (25 min) 🡪 Groups will have the students’ challenges in paper copies on their tables. In each group a moderator will guide the debate and take notes. Some questions that may help to moderate the debate:

Which challenges are relevant for you as an academic teaching first-year students?
Have you identified them in your students? How did you identify them?
Which ones did you not see or which ones did stand out for you?
Have you identified these profiles in your students? Are some of these students’ profiles relevant in your teaching context?

“Post-it moment” (5 min) 🡪 Each participant will show with a post-it (on the blackboard / wall) which challenges he/she thinks affects his/her students most.

3.- Tools for academics teaching first-year students (30 min)

Presentation (5min) 🡪 Showing tools for academics teaching first-year students (work-in-progress):

Checklist
Validated tools
Feedback from students focus groups where they state what did help them and what not.

Work in small groups (25 min) 🡪 In each group a moderator will guide the debate. Academics share their own experiences and put their ideas on a digital wall (Padlet, Miro or the like):

“What do I do to help my students in and outside class”
“What resources / tools do I need to help my students”

4.- Exit ticket (10 min) 🡪 Each person writes down their thoughts about the session in the format:

I learned…
I wonder…
I wish…

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The START project

Open professional development session for academics teaching first-year students

https://supportingstart.eu/

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INTRODUCTION

Premises

Positive: Increase in students accessing Higher Education.

Negative: High drop out rate, mainly in the first year.

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Guaranteeing access to university does not guarantee the success of Higher Education

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Why do those teaching first-year students have a special role to play?

How can I help my first-year students engage, persist & succeed?

How good am I at supporting student transition?

How could we improve the joint-work with pre-university institutions?

Bridging the inter-sectoral communication gap.

QUESTIONS

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PROJECT OBJECTIVES

O1: Raise awareness in those teaching first-year courses about students’ challenges and their special role

O2: Tools and activities for academics to help their students

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O3: Self-assessment of academics to promote inclusive excellence

O4: Facilitate dialogue with key actors of the pre-university education sector

Improve students’ transition

to university

PROJECT AIM

START aims to promote social inclusion by equipping those teaching first-year courses with the competences necessary to better support all students in their transition to higher education, ensuring students learn how to learn in this new environment and are set up for success.

PROJECT OBJECTIVES

START project aims to achieve four main objectives related to raising awareness of the academics on the challenges that students face when transitioning to higher education, providing academics with tools and methods to improve the experience of their students, and improving the communication between the higher education and pre-higher education sectors.

Objective 1: Make those teaching 1st-year courses aware of the difficulties students face when entering higher education, on the one hand, & of the special role those teaching first-year students have in making higher education inclusive, accessible & engaging, on the other.

Objective 2: Introduce higher education academics to tools & activities they can use in order to set ALL students up for success through helping students learn how to learn in higher education; and revising assessment, learning and teaching activities to help students successfully adapt to learning in this new environment.

Objective 3: Agree on indicators of excellence and create tools that can guide professional development efforts and recognition for those who teach first-year students and are keen to promote inclusive excellence (student retention & success) through core curriculum activities.

Objective 4: Facilitate dialogue with key actors of the pre-university education sector, so as to increase the number of diverse students who access higher education better prepared to learn and succeed in higher education environment.

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CONSORTIUM

University of Groningen

Polytechnic University of Madrid

University College Dublin

University of Poitiers

University of Ljublijana

Education for an interdependent world

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Open professional development session for academics teaching first-year students

https://supportingstart.eu/

Galaxies of students’ challenges

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Emotional

Challenges

Informatioal

Challenges

Communicational

Challenges

Organisational

Challenges

PERSONAL

UNIVERSITY

CULTURE

SOCIAL

ACADEMIC

ENGAGEMET

FIRST YEAR STUDENTS’ TRANSITION

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GALAXIES DEFINITION

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The Academic Engagement galaxy englobes all the cognitive challenges that are involved in the student’s adaptation process to the methods, organisation and performance required to follow a higher education course.

The University Culture challenges galaxy is composed of all the social, educational and institutional codes, values and norms that are used and expected in the academic environment. These can be explicit but mostly they are implicit and vary from one country to another.

Central to the Personal challenges galaxy is the ability to create new identities, including social, academic and adult identities. Influencing all the individual character traits such as levels of resilience and confidence that impact how students cope. Other challenges involve trying to fit in socially and adapting to new academic demands. Underpinning all of the above are the emotional challenges that students face in every aspect of their transition.

The Social challenges galaxy considers the relationships that first-year students build up with peers, the university staff and the university’s broader community allowing them to create a sense of belonging, engage and get support.

PROJECT AIM

START aims to promote social inclusion by equipping those teaching first-year courses with the competences necessary to better support all students in their transition to higher education, ensuring students learn how to learn in this new environment and are set up for success.

PROJECT OBJECTIVES

START project aims to achieve four main objectives related to raising awareness of the academics on the challenges that students face when transitioning to higher education, providing academics with tools and methods to improve the experience of their students, and improving the communication between the higher education and pre-higher education sectors.

Objective 1: Make those teaching 1st-year courses aware of the difficulties students face when entering higher education, on the one hand, & of the special role those teaching first-year students have in making higher education inclusive, accessible & engaging, on the other.

Objective 2: Introduce higher education academics to tools & activities they can use in order to set ALL students up for success through helping students learn how to learn in higher education; and revising assessment, learning and teaching activities to help students successfully adapt to learning in this new environment.

Objective 3: Agree on indicators of excellence and create tools that can guide professional development efforts and recognition for those who teach first-year students and are keen to promote inclusive excellence (student retention & success) through core curriculum activities.

Objective 4: Facilitate dialogue with key actors of the pre-university education sector, so as to increase the number of diverse students who access higher education better prepared to learn and succeed in higher education environment.

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TRANSVERSAL CHALLENGES

Emotional

Challenges

Challenge their sense of themselves
Identify struggle
Lack of confidence in their academic ability, dealing with impostor syndrome and feeling powerless
Self-confidence dependent on their academic performance.
Overwhelming feeling like: anxiety, fear, loneliness.
Risk behaviors such as substance use

Communicational

Challenges

Overcoming communication apprehension
Participating in bigger lectures
Understanding the communications and feedback codes
Developing linguistic capital and use academic oral and written language
Breaking the communication barrier in lectures, test, work group.

Organisational

Challenges

Adjusting to a new learning time organization and routines
Access to student support structures
Managing personal and university student life and finding balance between them
Developing learning strategies, both cognitive processing and metacognitive regulation
Dealing with receiving limited support to cope with organization strategies in a short time
Adapting to a greater workload, difficulty and requirements

Informational

Challenges

Getting resourcefulness with cold knowledge
Critically assessing sources of information, managing and use different type of sources and represent numerical information
Using appropriate information sharing codes
Filtering a great deal of information
Finding, accessing and assessing quality information and sources of knowledge for learning purposes

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GALAXY: ACADEMIC ENGAGEMENT

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GALAXY: UNIVERSITY CULTURE

The University Culture challenges galaxy is composed of all the social, educational and institutional codes, values and norms that are used and expected in the academic environment. These can be explicit but mostly they are implicit and vary from one country to another.

Predominance of engagement with research instead of knowledge as facts : students are expected to engage with knowledge coming mainly from research and understand it as a part of an evolving process
Space-time organisation and boundaries : changes in terms of boundaries and organisation at the university.
Education format : students have to understand and adapt to the fact that the education format will not be the same as in high school.
Administrative formalities and practical information : getting through the admission process, obtaining access to the university services, getting answers to their questions, etc

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GALAXY: PERSONAL

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GALAXY: SOCIAL

The Social challenges galaxy considers the relationships that first-year students build up with peers, the university staff and the university’s broader community allowing them to create a sense of belonging, engage and get support.

Belonging: students face the challenges of settling into a new social environment where they must actively build a new social network with their fellow students.
Support : sharing experiences, discussing common challenges, and forming lasting friendships with peer relationships is particularly important to create a support system
Engagement : By adapting to university social norms and values and participating actively, students are prone to engage in the university community. Participating in events, clubs and other groups, may also help students integrate university social networks.

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SUB-GROUPS OF STUDENTS

First-generation students
Older/mature
Working students / Part-time students
Foreign students
Migrants

Students with additional needs
Socially disadvantaged
LGBTQ
Marginalized students
Students out of traditional route

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Work in small groups

Open professional development session for academics teaching first-year students

https://supportingstart.eu/

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Emotional

Challenges

Informatioal

Challenges

Communicational

Challenges

Organisational

Challenges

PERSONAL

UNIVERSITY

CULTURE

SOCIAL

ACADEMIC

ENGAGEMET

FIRST YEAR STUDENTS’ TRANSITION

SUB-GROUPS OF STUDENTS AND GALAXIES

First-generation students
Older/mature
Working students / Part-time students
Foreign students
Migrants
Students with additional needs
Socially disadvantaged
LGBTQ
Marginalized students
Students out of traditional route

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Open professional development session for academics teaching first-year students

https://supportingstart.eu/

Tools for academics teaching first-year students

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TOOLS FOR ACADEMICS

Reflective checklist

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Validated questionnaires to explore challenges

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TOOLS FOR ACADEMICS

Validated questionnaires to explore challenges

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TOOLS FOR ACADEMICS

Guide for good and bad practices

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Work in small groups

Open professional development session for academics teaching first-year students

https://supportingstart.eu/

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What do I do to help my students in class?
What do I do to help my students outside class?
What resources and tools do I need to help them more and better?

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SURVIVAL KIT - PADLET

https://short.upm.es/bg53a

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EXIT TICKET

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Open professional development session for academics teaching first-year students

https://supportingstart.eu/

Thank you

https://supportingstart.eu/