How can we best facilitatestudent transition to higher education?

Claire HamshireSenior Learning and Teaching FellowFaculty of Health, Psychology and Social CareManchester Metropolitan University

The Research

Evaluatestudent

induction needs

First stage

Curriculum

redesign

Easy start

project

Second stage

Curriculum

redesign

2007 cohortFocus groups

Work withStudentpartner

2008 cohort Narrative interviews

CRS survey

2009 cohort

Narrative

interviews

‘Go out there and experience it all. Living for your self, doing everything for yourself not relying on other people and meeting so many new people, everyone is so friendly’.

Predicting success

Positive factors Negative factors

Promoting success

How can we tip the balance towards student success?

‘To understand outcomes one needs a deeper awareness of the various positive and negative factors operating within a given individual, and the weight which that individual assigns to them’

(Woodley et al 1987)

What is narrative inquiry?

Focus on an experience and follow where it leads

Trying to make sense of live as lived by eliciting stories of the experiences that make up peoples lives.

The Storytellers

• A random sample of10% of the 2009/10 BSc Physiotherapy cohort (84 students)• 4 male & 4 female• Age range 18 – 30• 4 mature students• 1 international student

Small group work

• Read through the narrative fragments from the student interviews.

• Consider what you could do to facilitate the individual student’s transitions – ‘tip the balance towards success’

Alice

Goals for first year• ‘I want to be more

academic’• ‘I want to get a new

group of friends’• ‘To mature a lot as a

person’ becoming more of an adult rather than being a child’

•18 years old•Direct entry•First in family at university•From Greater Manchester•Close family•Wanted to be close to home•‘Shocked’ by the work

Adnam

Goals for the first year• ‘I don’t just want to pass

I want to do really well’• ‘I’d like to go to a few

Manchester United games’

• ‘I’d like to get a job hopefully somewhere’

• ‘I’d like to see a 3D film’

•19 years old•Had to resit A levels•British Muslim•Family live 40 miles away•University is ‘a nice phase to go through’

OliverGoals for the first year• ‘Get a first anything

else will be a huge disappointment’

• ‘Be financially stable’• ‘Not have to work

during the summer’• ‘Maybe have some

friends that I could socialise with in the summer’

• 24 years old• Lives with girlfriend• From Hull via Leeds• Previous degree 2006• Unhappy with his

employment opportunities from first degree

Sara

Goals for the first year• ‘Gosh. This sounds awful

but I just want to get through it and enjoy it’

• ‘Come out with a goodish grade’

• ‘Just to be here is great to be honest just to have got this far’

• ‘I don’t have massive goals’ 

•19 years old•Deferred entry to travel for a year•Needed to retake one A level to get grades•From Yorkshire•Middle class

Sara - ‘I’m really worried about the whole copying thing because it’s really hard to write without’

‘I think it’s just scary because I don’t really know what I’m meant to be writing and it’s all so … I don’t know I’m just going to have to do draft after draft I think and just start simple and then make it better’

‘It was pretty hard and getting back into it. I had to work a bit harder than I thought I would of’

Oliver – ‘I like that it’s a lot of talk in sessions and there’s a lot of self learning and self reading but really you’re told something, then told to go and learn about it yourself and then you discuss that in the tutorials which is you know it’s really good’ ‘I find it really useful in between having the lecture to read yourself so you’ve built up quite a fair, few questions that you want to ask’

Theme 1 – State of readiness

Expectations & Autonomy

Adnam – ‘A levels they basically tell you everything that you need to know in the class while here in your lectures you’ve got to make sure that you add on to your own notes because they just cover the basics’

‘Everything is like, learning, I like things done for me so I prefer they taught us everything’

‘I stay quiet all the way throughout the lesson us teenagers just find that quite hard’

Alice - ‘I think it’s a shock how much work there is at first. I think when you’re at college you’re given sheets. It’s spoon-fed to you basically they tell you what you need to know. Whereas here you’ve got to find out’ ‘I’ve always been told what I need to know for my exam and how to write it. Whereas, now it’s about yourself being able to learn it and describe it, how you feel. It’s different you’ve got to work it out for yourself’

Sara - ‘In the first week I started really low I just didn’t fit in, I just didn’t feel at home at all it was really weird’‘The first week you have to go out you are a wet blanket it you don’t go out in that first week and you have to go out every night and I don’t want to go out every night’‘I didn’t enjoy the pressure of feeling like you had to go out. I did go out but it was the fact that everyone else felt they had to go out and no one stayed in so you were alone when you did stay in’

Oliver -‘I remembered what I was like when I was sort of nineteen coming to uni it’s all a bit of a laugh really. I wanted to get drunk and go out and meet people and just be silly really not take it too seriously whereas this time round I really wanted to take it serious’.

‘I wanted to live in town in an apartment in a young professional area because that’s what I’d been and that’s kind of still what I class myself as’

Adnam – ‘I really enjoy it yeah it’s a nice to phase to go through in your life. Go out there and experience it all. Living for your self, doing everything for yourself not relying on other people and meeting so many new people, everyone is so friendly’

‘On the nights out as you can imagine we went to a lot of places, everywhere was really busy that was really good’

Alice - ‘I’m quite a homely person so I wanted to be quite close to home’

‘I liked the little coffee event thing, that was nice because you got to meet people and I was talking to the lecturer that interviewed me’

‘They have their own group of friends because they’re always there which is why I wanted to go there initially but I can’t change it now can I? I suppose I can socialise as well with other people’

Theme 2 – Social networks

Fitting in

Sara – ‘So far there’s a lot to do, a lot, lot to do. You’ve just got to start it. It’s just starting it and sitting down and doing it and feeling, because you do spend hours and do like a page and you feel like well’

‘You do feel a bit intimidated by people walking round there but I think it’s because you know it’s a bad area’

Oliver -‘I think that I still treat the course as a nine to five I don’t see it as a learning of lectures or timetables between nine to one. I still like to be in that habit of working I think it’s quite productive and it still gives you a cut off point to where you can go home and not have to worry about assignment deadlines and just live your normal life as though you’re not a student really. Which is good because it still gives me weekends and things’

Adnam – ‘I was quite surprised to be getting so much work to do straight away’

‘I’ve not done a lot of cooking, mainly takeaways. I’ve done a bit of cleaning and stuff’

‘I get to go home every weekend I bring some food home on the weekend on Sunday and eat that on the Monday and Tuesday’

Alice – ‘Cooking’s not been too bad actually. I’ve got to grips now with that I think. Sometimes if I can’t be bothered I’ll just have like a microwave meal’

‘I find on the Tuesday and Thursday I just work. I’ll have a bit of a lie in and then from when I get up I’ll work until tea time and then maybe do a bit more after. Trying to read up because it’s not how you’re taught in college’

Theme 3 – Ability to cope

Personal autonomy

Oliver - ‘I’m working around ten hours at the moment but that’s going to increase to twenty hours and I’m starting to worry that I might just not be able to fit it all in but it’s going to be a case of tough luck because I need the money without it I can’t survive’

‘It’s very difficult you’ve got this balance of earning enough money to simply survive and make ends meet and sacrificing a bit of study time’

(Oliver successfully applied for 2 grants)

Adnam - I’d like to get a job hopefully somewhere. I’ve got an interview next week. Hopefully I’ll get a nice part-time job’

(Adnam is supported financially by his extended family and currently works 8 hours a week)

Theme 4 - Finance

Work/study balance

Alice – ‘I haven’t got my loan through yet so it’s been a bit of a nuisance but my family have been really supportive in helping me with shopping and stuff and paying for my rent at the moment’

‘Usually I work on the Saturday night. It’s good really because it’s not too many hours, it’s only like five or six hours a week’

(Alice received funding from MMU hardship fund)

Recommendations

Offer a range of options

PartnershipTransition is a process

Pre-entry Year 1

Week 1

Build relationships

Year 2

SuccessfulTransition

TeachingAssessmentGroup workStudy skills

The last word from the students

Adnam – ‘When lecturers say do your work, do it they’re not just saying it you need to do it. Always keep on top of it don’t leave it right to the last day’. ‘Just like I said enjoy your first year and like don’t wander around late at night on your own definitely make sure you’re with one of your friends’. ‘I think if you get a loan out have enough sense so no point in wasting it all on going out’.

Alice - ‘Try and be a bit more independent at home before you come so it’s not like a major shock at the beginning. In September everyone’s like I don’t know how to turn a washing machine on. Try and have some healthy cooking recipes rather than beans on toast or something. Get a job and save money before so then you have money you can fall back on if you need it or you don’t get as much loan as you hoped for then you can use that’.