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Moving Beyond First Year: An Exploration of Staff and Student Experience

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Transition pedagogy has had a major impact on the first yearexperience for higher education students in Australia. Similarly, there has been a significant focus on transitioning students from their final year of study to employment. David Birbeck discusses the “middle child”; the years in between the first and final year of study.

Image courtesy of interviewee. September 11, 2024

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The speaker discusses a significant issue in higher education, particularly related to student preparedness during the transition from first to second year. They describe a network of program directors who identified a concerning trend: second-year students seemed less prepared and required more support than in previous years. This video observation raised alarm across various programs, as there were notable declines in student performance, retention rates, and overall readiness.

The problem arose partly because there is a lack of clear data defining "second-year" students due to the diverse pathways they take to enter university. A review of existing literature highlighted the concept of the "sophomore slump," which references challenges faced by second-year students, yet the speaker asserts that the current situation reflects a new and more complex issue that cannot be solely attributed to this familiar phenomenon.

To address the problem, qualitative research methods were employed, including focus groups with staff and students, to gain insights into the challenges they faced. Major themes emerged from discussions with staff, including concerns about over-dependence of students on instructors, the uniqueness of the second-year transition, and the crucial role of educators in supporting students. Students also reported feeling supported, but acknowledged the distinct differences in experiences between first-year and later courses.

The dialogue pointed towards the necessity of recognizing and addressing various transition moments within academic programs, suggesting that support and pedagogical strategies should be tailored not just to the transition into university, but throughout the entire student journey, including preparing for placements and specialization. The speaker emphasizes the importance of compassion pedagogy and the educator's role in facilitating students' transitions within their courses, leading to better educational outcomes. The overall conclusion calls for further research on student experiences during these transitions and the need for better data collection methods to understand and improve the student journey in higher education.

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Here are five key points from the video:

1. **Increasing Challenges in Second-Year Students**: There has been a noticeable decline in the preparedness of second-year students across various programs. Faculty observed that these students required more support and had declining grade point averages and retention rates, which coincided with a trend of needing more "handholding."

2. **Focus on Transition Pedagogies**: The conversation highlights the importance of transition pedagogies, specifically regarding how students transition into and out of university. While first-year transition supports are well established, there is a growing recognition that the second-year transition also warrants similar attention to ensure student success.

3. **Data Limitations**: There is a significant challenge in defining and gathering data on second-year students due to their diverse pathways into the university system. The lack of quantifiable data makes it difficult to gain insights into their progress and challenges, leading to a reliance on qualitative research methods to understand their experiences.

4. **Support Structures and Student Perspective**: Interviews with students and staff revealed that students appreciated the support integrated into their programs, contrasting with the perception that external support was less beneficial. Additionally, students experienced multiple transitions throughout their academic journey, such as moving from a generic to a specialized curriculum.

5. **Need for Further Research and Understanding**: There is a call for more research focused on the second-year experience in higher education. This entails understanding the nuances of the student journey during this period, improving data collection methods, and investigating the impact of various support structures to better facilitate student learning outcomes during these transitional phases.

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Here are some key quotes extracted from the video along with their significance:

1. **"It's really important to start at the very beginning when we first started becoming aware that there was something going on."**
- This quote emphasizes the need for foundational awareness in understanding the issues faced by second-year students.

2. **"They required more teaching...their grade point averages seemed to be dropping."**
- This highlights the academic struggles that second-year students are experiencing, suggesting a decline in preparedness and performance.

3. **"We simply don't have a good definition for what second year is."**
- This indicates a significant gap in institutional knowledge and tracking, making it difficult to address student issues effectively.

4. **"Transitions are a time of great risk, a great growth for students, but also great risk."**
- This reflects on the dual nature of academic transitions, underscoring that while they present opportunities for growth, they also come with substantial challenges.

5. **"The issue they thought was in first year...led us to things like first year transition pedagogies."**
- This demonstrates the complexity of issues impacting student performance, showing that understanding the first year is crucial for addressing second-year problems.

6. **"The sophomore slump...can seem like death for a student."**
- This metaphor speaks to the emotional and psychological toll that students may feel during their second year, where the initial excitement of university life has faded.

7. **"We had students who were less prepared for their second year than they used to be."**
- This emphasizes the declining readiness of students as they progress in their academic journey, suggesting systemic issues in support and curriculum.

8. **"The importance of the educator...if they were caring, if they were listening, and they invited the students to approach them..."**
- This quote highlights the critical role of faculty in fostering student success and support through their approachability and care.

9. **"Transitions within a program...students experiencing multiple transitions."**
- This reflects a more nuanced understanding of the learning journey, suggesting that transition pedagogies should account for various phases within the academic experience, not just at entry and exit points.

10. **"We need to start to think about key transition moments within a program."**
- This quote makes a case for the importance of recognizing and supporting students at various stages of their educational journey, rather than focusing solely on first-year and graduation.

These quotes collectively underscore the complexities surrounding student transition experiences as they progress through their programs, highlighting the need for targeted support and a deeper understanding of these transitional phases.

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Here are some articles that discuss similar themes related to student preparedness, transitions in higher education, and the experiences of second-year students:

1. **"Understanding the Sophomore Slump: Navigating Transition in Higher Education"**
This article explores the challenges faced by second-year students, often referred to as the "sophomore slump," and discusses strategies for institutions to better support this group through tailored programming and resource allocation.

2. **"Bridging the Gap: Supporting Students Through the First Two Years of College"**
This paper highlights the transition from first to second year, focuses on the common struggles faced by students, such as academic adjustment and social integration, and suggests comprehensive support systems that can enhance student readiness and retention.

3. **"The Role of Faculty in Supporting Student Transitions: A Compassionate Approach"**
This research discusses the critical role educators play in helping students navigate the complexities of their academic journeys, particularly during pivotal transition points. It reinforces the importance of compassionate pedagogy and tailored instructional strategies.

4. **"Transitioning from First Year to Second Year: Strategies for Retention in Higher Education"**
This article examines various strategies that universities can implement to improve retention rates for second-year students, including data analysis, mentoring programs, and enhanced academic support services.

5. **"Qualitative Insights into Student Experiences in Higher Education: The Importance of Focus Groups"**
This study outlines the value of qualitative research methodologies, such as focus groups, in understanding student experiences and identifying key areas for improvement in academic programs.

6. **"Data-Driven Approaches to Understanding Student Preparedness Across Academic Years"**
This paper emphasizes the need for better data collection and analysis to capture the experiences and preparedness levels of students at different stages of their university journey, advocating for more systematic approaches to understanding student transitions.

7. **"Exploring the Role of Holistic Support for Second-Year College Students"**
This article investigates the wide-ranging support needs of second-year students and presents frameworks for providing holistic support, addressing both academic and personal development areas.

8. **"Pedagogical Strategies for Enhancing Student Engagement During Transitions"**
This paper discusses effective pedagogical strategies that can enhance student engagement and success during critical transitions within the higher education experience.

These articles highlight the importance of understanding and addressing the unique challenges faced by students during their academic journeys, particularly in the transition from first to second year, and emphasize the need for targeted support strategies by educational institutions.

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Well, I think it's really important

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to start at the very beginning when we first started

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becoming aware that there was something going on.

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And we, in our health sciences, division, run a think

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or a program directors network,

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we get all our program directors together to talk about,

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all to share experiences,

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to talk about what's going on in their programs

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and if there are problems to start to localize and,

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and to do something about those programs.

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And we had, it's not only a small program,

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but he mentioned that they'd been having some trouble

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with their second year students.

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And he'd said things like, they didn't seem as

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prepared these days as they used to be.

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And it'd been going on for some years.

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They'd been noticing it in small amounts,

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but it, it, it started to become a problem.

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They required more teaching.

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They, their,

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grade point averages seemed to be dropping.

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Their retention rates seemed to be affected,

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and the room erupted every program director

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and just was like, yes, that's happening.

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Our programs too. What's going on here?

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And we thought, okay, we will just go into the data

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and we'll be able to locate that really quickly.

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Um, not the case because,

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we simply don't have a good definition for

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what second year is.

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So students come into our university,

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they come in through different pathways.

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They come in with credit, they study part-time, they study

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through various pathways.

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We don't know where a student is at any

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real point in their time.

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We watch 'em when they come in

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and when they leave this point in the middle,

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that's really hard to grasp.

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So there's no data.

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We don't jump and research every single type of,

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question that comes up in these.

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But this had big red flags, right? It was consistent.

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There was themed across many programs. It was new.

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Um, and a really big concern was that

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although the problem was occurring in second year,

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that's not maybe where they were implying the issue was.

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The issue they thought was in first year.

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And that led us to things like first year

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transition pedagogies.

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So we'd adopted, like most universities in Australia,

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this approach to first year transition.

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Now, we know transitions are a time of great risk,

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a great growth for students, but also great risk.

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And historically we've managed that in

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what they call a first generation, which is supports

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that exist around the curriculum.

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So, you know, going

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to sessions about study skills might be an example of that.

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And what Transition Pedagogies was, was a, a,

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a huge attempt at building the skills that a student needed

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to succeed inside of a program, inside of the curriculum.

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So it was a second generation approach to transition

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and supporting students through that process.

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So we'd, we'd, we'd, taken and,

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and transition into university for students is massive.

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They, I mean, know very diverse student cohorts.

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We have, you know,

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universities have a language all of their own.

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We have cultures, all of our own.

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We have ways of teaching

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that are quite distinct from other forms of education.

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There's a lot for students to get a hang of.

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And we definitely need to have that support

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for first years inside of curriculum.

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There's really two forms of transition that

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are predominant in the literature, right?

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There's transition into university

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and there's transition out of university

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and lots of support.

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We just talked a little bit about transition pedagogies,

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which is transition into the university,

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transition out of the university.

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Are the supports put in place often

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with professional organizations

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or with disciplines for students who are now ready to leave?

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They're getting their degree

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and they're about to go into professional practice.

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So how do we support a student through that process?

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Ours doesn't fit, ours fits in the middle of all of that.

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So the, the, the dominant work in that middle area is

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through the US with a thing they call the sophomore slump.

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That's really the, there are a few papers around the place,

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but there's not a lot about that middle ground.

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The sophomore slumps been investigated since, gosh,

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late fifties probably.

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And so it is often, you know, thought of

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as like this midlife crisis.

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And it's this place where students can get to sometimes

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where the excitement of first year starting to wear off,

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and they're a long way from graduating.

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And there's this middle ground,

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which can seem like death for a student.

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And, and so there's a lot of concern around

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what does that look like?

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The thing is, this wasn't,

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and that, that's a, that's an old idea.

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We weren't experiencing that this is a new problem.

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So the sophomore slump, there were some aspects of it

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that resonated, but not to the extent of saying, look,

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that's what we are getting here.

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Let's leave that alone.

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We really needed to look a lot more deeply,

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and we had a lot of trouble

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because it's, how do you define this thing?

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It's in the middle. If it was a sophomore slump,

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we would've experiencing that for a long time, right?

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Because it's, it's an age old problem.

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There, there are aspects of this that we constantly have

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to address, but this was new.

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This was a new problem.

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Um, we had students who were, who were less prepared

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for their second year than they used to be.

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We had students who were,

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needing more handholding than they used to be.

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We had, so these were new things, whereas a sophomore slump,

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yes, it gets hard for students in the middle there,

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and that's a component, but this was more than that.

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We had trouble with data because we couldn't define it.

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So quantitative data was really out the window,

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and we were left with a situation

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where we really couldn't describe the group

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of students we were looking at investigating very easily.

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So data isn't a lot of use.

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So what we wanted to do was

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to approach it in a more qualitative way.

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In other words, to be able to talk to our staff

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and our students about what they were experiencing to try

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to get a better handle on that.

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If we, we thought that if we could get a better

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understanding of the challenges,

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if we could get a better understanding of the, the points

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where staff

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and students were experienced, maybe similar things,

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then we could do something about that.

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So we talked to staff with focus groups,

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and we talked to program directors,

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and we talked to course coordinators who were responsible

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for their courses that weren't in first year.

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I mean, that's where the idea of

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beyond first year came from.

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There's difficulty in, in, in trying to say, well,

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it can't necessarily be second year.

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It could be a third year course,

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but it's not a leaving course.

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It's point in the middle. So we did focus groups

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and the focus groups, were around two main drivers.

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The readiness for students to go into these courses,

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but leaving first year and the impacts on staff

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and students of that level of readiness, they were the,

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the driving questions.

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And of course, you, you explore, it's open,

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it's semi-structured, open-ended.

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So you're, you're exploring those ideas

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and, the thematic analysis

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as you would expect of those things.

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The students, we had more trouble accessing

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because they're so dispersed.

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Um, and we decided on an EUR for that.

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We had a range of like a questions which were more

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around demographics and open-ended questions,

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which focused on similar sorts of areas,

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the challenges they were experiencing,

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whether they felt prepared for those challenges.

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Um, we were suspicious around things of curriculum.

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Um, so we wanted

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to know whether the students thought their second year

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or their courses not in first year were harder

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or easier than their first year courses.

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What was their comparison they thought

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and what their advice is that we could do

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to assist students in overcoming those.

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They were the four main drivers there.

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If I go to the staff first, we,

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we identified five themes, major themes.

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There was a lot inside of that, but five major themes.

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So the first theme of this idea about too much handholding,

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there was a belief of some staff that,

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so many changes had been made to first year

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that students didn't really need

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to take responsibility for their learning.

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Now, I don't know whether that's true or not,

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but that was their perception.

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So we'll go with that for now.

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And then when they came into their second year courses,

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they were relying on the teaching staff too much.

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We can talk about that a bit later on.

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Um, some lecturers talked about they

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Saw a transition moment in second year.

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So we saw a transition in,

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we've already talked about two forms of transition in

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and out of university,

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but some staff were saying, well, hang on a minute.

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Our first year's a very generic type first year.

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So for many students moving into the second year

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may not be the first time they've encountered their

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profession, but, but it's certainly to the depth

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that second year takes some,

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it's a very different look at their degree.

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Often they're going out into placement for the first time.

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So there's a kind of a transition happening there.

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And maybe there's something going on there too

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that we should be exploring.

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The second year fatigue stuff that, was, coming

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through the sophomore stunt, we are

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seeing some of that as well.

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So there's some, some convergence there.

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Um, the, I think the fourth thing

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that's a really important one is the

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importance of the educator.

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So if, if this is staff was saying, look,

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they felt things were better when students saw them

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as supporting them, it seems a very obvious thing to say,

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but still very important.

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So if they were caring, if they were listening

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and they invited the students to approach them,

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then they had better success with that sort of thing.

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And the last one was some lecturers in a position

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to see the whole program, the whole student journey.

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Some lecturers only see their course

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and there was a thought that

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if we could get better transparency about the connection

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between courses, that students would have a better,

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a better a program

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experience than when they only saw their

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course in isolation.

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So that were the five major findings that we,

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we came across there from the student's

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perspective, it was interesting.

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Students actually felt they were supported.

10:43.335 --> 10:48.125
There wasn't a whole, it was a little bit of data

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around that, but for the greatest part, students felt valued

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and they felt supported.

10:53.185 --> 10:55.085
So there wasn't a lot that they said, no,

10:55.085 --> 10:56.205
no, we don't feel supported.

10:56.665 --> 10:59.245
But they valued supports that were part of the program

10:59.745 --> 11:02.765
as opposed to the parts of support that were external

11:02.785 --> 11:04.445
to the program, which aligns

11:04.445 --> 11:06.765
with transition pedagogies approach really nicely.

11:07.445 --> 11:08.685
'cause that's what that was all about.

11:09.025 --> 11:11.165
It was about building that into the program.

11:11.345 --> 11:12.885
So there's a nice convergence there.

11:13.705 --> 11:14.725
Um, but they felt

11:14.725 --> 11:17.085
that first year was very different to the rest of the program.

11:17.545 --> 11:19.685
And then they started talking about this idea

11:19.685 --> 11:20.765
of transitions as well.

11:21.035 --> 11:24.565
Transitions within a program, not transitions into

11:24.705 --> 11:27.845
and transitions out of, but transitions within a program.

11:28.385 --> 11:29.765
And they talked about them,

11:30.115 --> 11:32.605
them experiencing multiple transitions.

11:33.225 --> 11:35.005
So,

11:35.105 --> 11:37.525
the one the staff were already mentioned was the one

11:37.525 --> 11:39.605
where they talked about a generic degree

11:39.825 --> 11:43.445
to a very specialized degree that was a transition moment.

11:43.845 --> 11:46.325
Students identified, you know,

11:46.525 --> 11:48.125
students are often going out into placement.

11:48.145 --> 11:51.485
So that movement of theory into,

11:51.615 --> 11:54.845
using theory in placement was a transition moment.

11:54.865 --> 11:56.965
It was a different way of seeing knowledge.

11:57.025 --> 11:58.045
It wasn't as simple.

11:58.185 --> 11:59.325
It was, you know,

11:59.325 --> 12:00.685
and they've got a whole placement

12:00.685 --> 12:01.845
to deal with too, haven't they?

12:01.995 --> 12:05.605
They're going out. So now, is it not just university,

12:05.635 --> 12:08.445
there's the site they've gotta get used to as well.

12:08.635 --> 12:12.125
There's the clients at the site, whatever form that takes.

12:12.865 --> 12:14.245
So there's a lot going on there.

12:14.785 --> 12:18.005
Um, for our students, many of them are going

12:18.005 --> 12:20.405
through life events form of transition.

12:20.985 --> 12:23.805
So it's not just incurring inside of pedagogy,

12:23.835 --> 12:25.365
it's also occurring in their life.

12:25.905 --> 12:28.525
And they also talked about the importance of a teacher.

12:28.705 --> 12:31.485
If they felt they could go to the teacher, then a lot

12:31.485 --> 12:32.725
of these things could be managed.

12:33.025 --> 12:36.085
And so there were, they were the five main, outcomes,

12:36.545 --> 12:39.715
the teaching skill, the,

12:40.015 --> 12:41.835
and there's, there's a growing field on

12:41.835 --> 12:45.555
what they call compassion pedagogy, which is the idea

12:45.655 --> 12:49.155
of caring for students and students seeing that you care.

12:49.935 --> 12:53.875
Um, it's a really big growing field in higher education

12:54.525 --> 12:55.675
still being explored,

12:55.975 --> 12:58.835
but that's clearly a place where students felt

12:59.145 --> 13:00.355
that was important.

13:00.395 --> 13:02.515
I mean, there are some issues around thinking of it in

13:02.515 --> 13:03.515
that way, but,

13:04.295 --> 13:06.035
but certainly that idea

13:06.055 --> 13:09.595
of the teacher opening up opportunities for the students

13:09.655 --> 13:12.115
to approach them of showing that they care

13:12.135 --> 13:14.755
of showing their interest is really critical.

13:15.175 --> 13:18.555
But the piece, the big piece that really has,

13:20.145 --> 13:23.725
affected the way I start to see design is this notion

13:23.725 --> 13:27.965
of transitions within a program, almost to the point

13:28.225 --> 13:29.405
of saying, you know,

13:29.435 --> 13:33.205
I've really questioning like transitions pedagogies first

13:33.205 --> 13:34.365
year is really important.

13:35.315 --> 13:36.605
It's been very successful.

13:36.835 --> 13:38.805
There's no question that that's really important.

13:39.905 --> 13:41.405
But I, you'd wanna be questioning

13:41.425 --> 13:45.365
and saying, well, should we be approaching the whole program

13:46.115 --> 13:48.565
with that same thinking and approach?

13:48.705 --> 13:51.285
Is it possible to, in first year,

13:51.915 --> 13:54.005
give a student all the skills that they need

13:54.005 --> 13:55.845
to be successful over a program

13:56.395 --> 14:00.445
when the students are perceiving profound differences in the

14:00.445 --> 14:01.605
way they have to handle that program?

14:02.465 --> 14:04.765
Or do we need to start to think about

14:05.425 --> 14:07.405
key transition moments within a program

14:07.945 --> 14:09.885
and start to use that same thinking

14:09.885 --> 14:11.085
and transition pedagogies,

14:11.105 --> 14:13.085
but are multiple times throughout the program?

14:13.585 --> 14:15.445
And that's probably where my head's at at the moment,

14:15.445 --> 14:17.485
where our whole team of, you know, Lois

14:17.485 --> 14:20.045
and Cat we're really at that point of saying, look,

14:20.835 --> 14:23.605
when you, when you're going out into a workplace, we need

14:23.605 --> 14:25.565
to think of that as being a transition moment.

14:26.035 --> 14:29.405
When you're moving from a generic first year into a specific

14:29.405 --> 14:31.005
second year, we need to think of that

14:31.005 --> 14:32.005
as a transition moment.

14:32.225 --> 14:34.405
It changes your identity as a student.

14:34.465 --> 14:36.445
You're growing and modifying the

14:36.445 --> 14:37.605
way in which you see yourself.

14:37.835 --> 14:40.165
Therefore, we need to be thinking of that in different ways.

14:40.595 --> 14:43.125
It's not just learning and knowledge and application.

14:43.315 --> 14:44.525
There's more going on there.

14:44.655 --> 14:48.965
We're starting to see in some places across the sector,

14:48.975 --> 14:52.965
we're starting to see, asynchronous teaching

14:52.965 --> 14:56.205
where sometimes a teacher doesn't have a, a prominent role

14:56.425 --> 14:59.605
and I think we wanna make sure the teacher always has a

14:59.765 --> 15:01.565
prominent role in, in the teaching.

15:01.825 --> 15:04.525
Um, and so we think that's a really important thing

15:04.545 --> 15:05.645
to emphasize.

15:05.705 --> 15:09.005
And, you know, there's a human being in there that

15:09.305 --> 15:12.165
that's emphasizing with your journey as a student

15:12.665 --> 15:14.805
and your, that cares about all that.

15:14.805 --> 15:16.045
So that, that's really important.

15:17.415 --> 15:19.195
The removal of first year supports,

15:19.895 --> 15:21.195
that's really interesting.

15:21.255 --> 15:22.875
So students talked a little bit about

15:23.215 --> 15:25.475
how in transition pedagogies, there's a lot

15:25.475 --> 15:26.955
of specified supports

15:27.295 --> 15:31.515
and the removals of those did cause some problems,

15:32.455 --> 15:34.835
but there are other supports

15:34.835 --> 15:37.715
that the university provides loads of other supports,

15:37.815 --> 15:39.755
and often these same students didn't

15:39.765 --> 15:40.915
avail themselves of those.

15:41.295 --> 15:44.715
And so the question then becomes around how do we make sure

15:44.785 --> 15:48.595
that the students who need that help actually have access to

15:48.595 --> 15:50.315
that help, or are seeing that

15:50.575 --> 15:53.035
or identified in that particular way?

15:53.095 --> 15:56.555
So that goes to the question of the data problem

15:56.585 --> 15:59.515
that we're having, which is, you know, one of the ways we do

15:59.515 --> 16:01.195
that in the first is there's loads of data around

16:01.195 --> 16:03.635
that we can identify that quickly, harder to do

16:03.635 --> 16:04.875
that in second year and beyond.

16:04.895 --> 16:06.555
So there's some, some stuff in there.

16:07.095 --> 16:09.395
And then there's this idea of multiple transitions.

16:09.735 --> 16:12.235
So implications for future research.

16:12.695 --> 16:15.515
We need to understand this whole phenomena a lot better.

16:16.255 --> 16:18.515
So we are really comfortable with the idea

16:18.585 --> 16:21.355
that first year is understood

16:22.095 --> 16:24.275
and leaving is very well understood.

16:24.575 --> 16:26.115
Yes, there are things we could do better.

16:26.215 --> 16:29.835
Yes, there are changes and you always wanna be on top of it

16:29.895 --> 16:31.035
and surveilling students

16:31.055 --> 16:32.995
and evaluating all of those sorts of things.

16:33.575 --> 16:36.475
But we understand it. There's a bit in the middle.

16:36.715 --> 16:38.635
I don't think we understand that very well at all.

16:38.835 --> 16:40.515
I think there's a lot to learn in there.

16:41.295 --> 16:44.755
So there's a lot of definitional stuff in there.

16:44.755 --> 16:47.835
There's a lot of understanding student journey through there

16:47.835 --> 16:48.995
that I think we can do better.

16:49.695 --> 16:51.795
And then there's this idea of data.

16:52.975 --> 16:55.475
We need ways of capturing data.

16:56.255 --> 16:59.235
And until we can identify those things, it's very hard

16:59.235 --> 17:00.235
to capture that data.

17:00.735 --> 17:02.795
So I think they're the big directions

17:02.895 --> 17:06.555
to better understand within the context where of, of,

17:06.895 --> 17:07.915
of, of where you're studying,

17:08.455 --> 17:11.155
and then how do you gather data to, to jump on that quickly.

17:11.295 --> 17:13.715
So loads of space for more research in there. I think.

00:00 - Well, I think it's really important to start at the very beginning when we first started becoming aware that there was something going on. And we, in our health sciences, division, run a think or a program directors network, we get all our program directors together to talk about,

00:18 - all to share experiences, to talk about what's going on in their programs and if there are problems to start to localize and, and to do something about those programs. And we had, it's not only a small program, but he mentioned that they'd been having some trouble with their second year students. And he'd said things like, they didn't seem as prepared these days as they used to be. And it'd been going on for some years.

00:39 - They'd been noticing it in small amounts, but it, it, it started to become a problem. They required more teaching. They, their, grade point averages seemed to be dropping. Their retention rates seemed to be affected, and the room erupted every program director and just was like, yes, that's happening. Our programs too. What's going on here? And we thought, okay, we will just go into the data

01:05 - and we'll be able to locate that really quickly. not the case because, we simply don't have a good definition for what second year is. So students come into our university, they come in through different pathways. They come in with credit, they study part-time, they study through various pathways. We don't know where a student is at any real point in their time.

01:28 - We watch 'em when they come in and when they leave this point in the middle, that's really hard to grasp. So there's no data. We don't jump and research every single type of, question that comes up in these. But this had big red flags, right? It was consistent. There was themed across many programs. It was new. and a really big concern was that although the problem was occurring in second year,

01:57 - that's not maybe where they were implying the issue was. The issue they thought was in first year. And that led us to things like first year transition pedagogies. So we'd adopted, like most universities in Australia, this approach to first year transition. Now, we know transitions are a time of great risk, a great growth for students, but also great risk. And historically we've managed that in what they call a first generation, which is supports

02:27 - that exist around the curriculum. So, you know, going to sessions about study skills might be an example of that. And what Transition Pedagogies was, was a, a, a huge attempt at building the skills that a student needed to succeed inside of a program, inside of the curriculum. So it was a second generation approach to transition and supporting students through that process. So we'd, we'd, we'd, taken and, and transition into university for students is massive.

03:01 - They, I mean, know very diverse student cohorts. We have, you know, universities have a language all of their own. We have cultures, all of our own. We have ways of teaching that are quite distinct from other forms of education. There's a lot for students to get a hang of. And we definitely need to have that support for first years inside of curriculum. There's really two forms of transition that

03:24 - are predominant in the literature, right? There's transition into university and there's transition out of university and lots of support. We just talked a little bit about transition pedagogies, which is transition into the university, transition out of the university. Are the supports put in place often with professional organizations or with disciplines for students who are now ready to leave?

03:48 - They're getting their degree and they're about to go into professional practice. So how do we support a student through that process? Ours doesn't fit, ours fits in the middle of all of that. So the, the, the dominant work in that middle area is through the US with a thing they call the sophomore slump. That's really the, there are a few papers around the place, but there's not a lot about that middle ground. The sophomore slumps been investigated since, gosh, late fifties probably.

04:21 - And so it is often, you know, thought of as like this midlife crisis. And it's this place where students can get to sometimes where the excitement of first year starting to wear off, and they're a long way from graduating. And there's this middle ground, which can seem like death for a student. And, and so there's a lot of concern around what does that look like? The thing is, this wasn't,

04:48 - and that, that's a, that's an old idea. We weren't experiencing that this is a new problem. So the sophomore slump, there were some aspects of it that resonated, but not to the extent of saying, look, that's what we are getting here. Let's leave that alone. We really needed to look a lot more deeply, and we had a lot of trouble because it's, how do you define this thing? It's in the middle. If it was a sophomore slump,

05:12 - we would've experiencing that for a long time, right? Because it's, it's an age old problem. There, there are aspects of this that we constantly have to address, but this was new. This was a new problem. we had students who were, who were less prepared for their second year than they used to be. We had students who were, needing more handholding than they used to be. We had, so these were new things, whereas a sophomore slump,

05:41 - yes, it gets hard for students in the middle there, and that's a component, but this was more than that. We had trouble with data because we couldn't define it. So quantitative data was really out the window, and we were left with a situation where we really couldn't describe the group of students we were looking at investigating very easily. So data isn't a lot of use. So what we wanted to do was to approach it in a more qualitative way.

06:07 - In other words, to be able to talk to our staff and our students about what they were experiencing to try to get a better handle on that. If we, we thought that if we could get a better understanding of the challenges, if we could get a better understanding of the, the points where staff and students were experienced, maybe similar things, then we could do something about that. So we talked to staff with focus groups,

06:36 - and we talked to program directors, and we talked to course coordinators who were responsible for their courses that weren't in first year. I mean, that's where the idea of beyond first year came from. There's difficulty in, in, in trying to say, well, it can't necessarily be second year. It could be a third year course, but it's not a leaving course. It's point in the middle. So we did focus groups

07:00 - and the focus groups, were around two main drivers. The readiness for students to go into these courses, but leaving first year and the impacts on staff and students of that level of readiness, they were the, the driving questions. And of course, you, you explore, it's open, it's semi-structured, open-ended. So you're, you're exploring those ideas and, the thematic analysis as you would expect of those things.

07:25 - The students, we had more trouble accessing because they're so dispersed. and we decided on an EUR for that. We had a range of like a questions which were more around demographics and open-ended questions, which focused on similar sorts of areas, the challenges they were experiencing, whether they felt prepared for those challenges. we were suspicious around things of curriculum. so we wanted

07:54 - to know whether the students thought their second year or their courses not in first year were harder or easier than their first year courses. What was their comparison they thought and what their advice is that we could do to assist students in overcoming those. They were the four main drivers there. If I go to the staff first, we, we identified five themes, major themes. There was a lot inside of that, but five major themes.

08:20 - So the first theme of this idea about too much handholding, there was a belief of some staff that, so many changes had been made to first year that students didn't really need to take responsibility for their learning. Now, I don't know whether that's true or not, but that was their perception. So we'll go with that for now. And then when they came into their second year courses, they were relying on the teaching staff too much.

08:48 - We can talk about that a bit later on. some lecturers talked about they Saw a transition moment in second year. So we saw a transition in, we've already talked about two forms of transition in and out of university, but some staff were saying, well, hang on a minute. Our first year's a very generic type first year. So for many students moving into the second year may not be the first time they've encountered their

09:12 - profession, but, but it's certainly to the depth that second year takes some, it's a very different look at their degree. Often they're going out into placement for the first time. So there's a kind of a transition happening there. And maybe there's something going on there too that we should be exploring. The second year fatigue stuff that, was, coming through the sophomore stunt, we are seeing some of that as well.

09:35 - So there's some, some convergence there. the, I think the fourth thing that's a really important one is the importance of the educator. So if, if this is staff was saying, look, they felt things were better when students saw them as supporting them, it seems a very obvious thing to say, but still very important. So if they were caring, if they were listening and they invited the students to approach them,

10:04 - then they had better success with that sort of thing. And the last one was some lecturers in a position to see the whole program, the whole student journey. Some lecturers only see their course and there was a thought that if we could get better transparency about the connection between courses, that students would have a better, a better a program experience than when they only saw their course in isolation.

10:33 - So that were the five major findings that we, we came across there from the student's perspective, it was interesting. Students actually felt they were supported. There wasn't a whole, it was a little bit of data around that, but for the greatest part, students felt valued and they felt supported. So there wasn't a lot that they said, no, no, we don't feel supported. But they valued supports that were part of the program

10:59 - as opposed to the parts of support that were external to the program, which aligns with transition pedagogies approach really nicely. 'cause that's what that was all about. It was about building that into the program. So there's a nice convergence there. but they felt that first year was very different to the rest of the program. And then they started talking about this idea of transitions as well.

11:21 - Transitions within a program, not transitions into and transitions out of, but transitions within a program. And they talked about them, them experiencing multiple transitions. So, the one the staff were already mentioned was the one where they talked about a generic degree to a very specialized degree that was a transition moment. Students identified, you know, students are often going out into placement.

11:48 - So that movement of theory into, using theory in placement was a transition moment. It was a different way of seeing knowledge. It wasn't as simple. It was, you know, and they've got a whole placement to deal with too, haven't they? They're going out. So now, is it not just university, there's the site they've gotta get used to as well. There's the clients at the site, whatever form that takes.

12:12 - So there's a lot going on there. for our students, many of them are going through life events form of transition. So it's not just incurring inside of pedagogy, it's also occurring in their life. And they also talked about the importance of a teacher. If they felt they could go to the teacher, then a lot of these things could be managed. And so there were, they were the five main, outcomes, the teaching skill, the,

12:40 - and there's, there's a growing field on what they call compassion pedagogy, which is the idea of caring for students and students seeing that you care. it's a really big growing field in higher education still being explored, but that's clearly a place where students felt that was important. I mean, there are some issues around thinking of it in that way, but, but certainly that idea

13:06 - of the teacher opening up opportunities for the students to approach them of showing that they care of showing their interest is really critical. But the piece, the big piece that really has, affected the way I start to see design is this notion of transitions within a program, almost to the point of saying, you know, I've really questioning like transitions pedagogies first year is really important. It's been very successful.

13:36 - There's no question that that's really important. But I, you'd wanna be questioning and saying, well, should we be approaching the whole program with that same thinking and approach? Is it possible to, in first year, give a student all the skills that they need to be successful over a program when the students are perceiving profound differences in the way they have to handle that program? Or do we need to start to think about

14:05 - key transition moments within a program and start to use that same thinking and transition pedagogies, but are multiple times throughout the program? And that's probably where my head's at at the moment, where our whole team of, you know, Lois and Cat we're really at that point of saying, look, when you, when you're going out into a workplace, we need to think of that as being a transition moment. When you're moving from a generic first year into a specific

14:29 - second year, we need to think of that as a transition moment. It changes your identity as a student. You're growing and modifying the way in which you see yourself. Therefore, we need to be thinking of that in different ways. It's not just learning and knowledge and application. There's more going on there. We're starting to see in some places across the sector, we're starting to see, asynchronous teaching

14:52 - where sometimes a teacher doesn't have a, a prominent role and I think we wanna make sure the teacher always has a prominent role in, in the teaching. and so we think that's a really important thing to emphasize. And, you know, there's a human being in there that that's emphasizing with your journey as a student and your, that cares about all that. So that, that's really important. The removal of first year supports,

15:19 - that's really interesting. So students talked a little bit about how in transition pedagogies, there's a lot of specified supports and the removals of those did cause some problems, but there are other supports that the university provides loads of other supports, and often these same students didn't avail themselves of those. And so the question then becomes around how do we make sure

15:44 - that the students who need that help actually have access to that help, or are seeing that or identified in that particular way? So that goes to the question of the data problem that we're having, which is, you know, one of the ways we do that in the first is there's loads of data around that we can identify that quickly, harder to do that in second year and beyond. So there's some, some stuff in there. And then there's this idea of multiple transitions.

16:09 - So implications for future research. We need to understand this whole phenomena a lot better. So we are really comfortable with the idea that first year is understood and leaving is very well understood. Yes, there are things we could do better. Yes, there are changes and you always wanna be on top of it and surveilling students and evaluating all of those sorts of things. But we understand it. There's a bit in the middle.

16:36 - I don't think we understand that very well at all. I think there's a lot to learn in there. So there's a lot of definitional stuff in there. There's a lot of understanding student journey through there that I think we can do better. And then there's this idea of data. We need ways of capturing data. And until we can identify those things, it's very hard to capture that data. So I think they're the big directions

17:02 - to better understand within the context where of, of, of, of where you're studying, and then how do you gather data to, to jump on that quickly. So loads of space for more research in there. I think.

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