Abstract
Current research and practice related to the first year experience (FYE) of commencing higher education students are still mainly piecemeal rather than institution-wide with institutions struggling to achieve cross-institutional integration, coordination and coherence of FYE policy and practice. Drawing on a decade of FYE-related research including an ALTC Senior Fellowship and evidence at a large Australian metropolitan university, this paper explores how one institution has addressed that issue by tracing the evolution and maturation of strategies that ultimately conceptualize FYE as “everybody's business.” It is argued that, when first generation co-curricular and second generation curricular approaches are integrated and implemented through an intentionally designed curriculum by seamless partnerships of academic and professional staff in a whole-of-institution transformation, we have a third generation approach labelled here as transition pedagogy. It is suggested that transition pedagogy provides the optimal vehicle for dealing with the increasingly diverse commencing student cohorts by facilitating a sense of engagement, support and belonging. What is presented here is an example of transition pedagogy in action.
Highlights
Integrating co-curricular and curricular learning experiencesThe research- and evidence-base harnessed at that time was successful in several ways: legitimising existing initiatives, cultivating discrete pockets of early intentional curriculum redesign, and sponsoring the appointment of a dedicated professional staff member as first year experience (FYE) Coordinator to oversee peer-facilitated approaches to orientation
Current research and practice related to the first year experience (FYE) of commencing higher education students are still mainly piecemeal rather than institution-wide with institutions struggling to achieve cross-institutional integration, coordination and coherence of FYE policy and practice
As regards co-curricular activities, attention was paid to the training and development of first year sessional teaching staff (Kift, 2002) while, in the Orientation arena, there was a concentrated effort on ―the production and uptake of a transferable orientation package to assist schools, faculties, courses or campuses to develop and administer orientation days specific to their own discipline‖ (QUT, 2009, p. 10). At this stage in the maturation of our FYE program, the functional divides between ―academic‖ and ―professional‖ responsibilities remained and work in both domains continued to occur in traditional isolation, with academic staff focussing on curriculum and pedagogical activities, and professional staff dealing with the development and implementation of Orientation activities and other co-curricular activities including Peer Programs
Summary
The research- and evidence-base harnessed at that time was successful in several ways: legitimising existing initiatives, cultivating discrete pockets of early intentional curriculum redesign, and sponsoring the appointment of a dedicated professional staff member as FYE Coordinator to oversee peer-facilitated approaches to orientation. At this stage in the maturation of our FYE program, the functional divides between ―academic‖ and ―professional‖ responsibilities remained and work in both domains continued to occur in traditional isolation, with academic staff focussing on curriculum and pedagogical activities, and professional staff dealing with the development and implementation of Orientation activities and other co-curricular activities including Peer Programs.3 It was Swing‘s address to the 7th Pacific Rim First Year in Higher Education Conference in 2003, in which he highlighted the ―foundational dimensions‖ (Foundational Dimensions, 2005) for enhancing the first tertiary year, that galvanised us to work holistically towards the ―joining-up‖ of our various well-intentioned but quite disparate and disconnected FYE initiatives.
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