Improving the Experiences of Second year Students

JeDr Jenny Van Hoof

Why focus on the second year?

• First year experience - major focus of government initiatives and institutional policy (Yorke and Longden, 2004).

• Experiences of L5 students neglected – lack of research/focus since Freedman identified the ‘sophomore slump’ in 1956

• Within LJMU, data compiled by Milsom and Stewart (2010) shows a dip in performance at L5

The Study

• Aim to improve experiences of L5 students• Action research approach - enables

practitioner improve their own practice (Birley and Moreland, 1998: 34) - findings feeding directly into improvements in teaching and learning.

• Focus groups

Findings

• Institutional Support: ‘I think if you look at the first year, you had a lot of tutorials and that, didn’t you? You’re just kind of left to your own devices in the second year, it’s quite hard to access information and find out what’s going on and when it’s going on’

• Transition into second year: ‘gap between the first and the second year, you do nothing for four months and then it’s like from one extreme to the other, if they could just ease us into it a bit more’

• Assessment and feedback: ‘Yeah, now all the essays are 2,500, 3,000 words, nearly double the first year, and they just expect you to be able to do it without showing us how.’

• Timetabling: ‘This year I’ve had a two hour lecture each day, it’s really stupid, I can’t get work experience, or a job, that’s why people don’t turn up to lectures’

Interventions

• Formal level 5 induction• Introduction of assessment workshops• Update Sociological Theory module• Alterations in timetabling• Attendance Monitoring• Movement of assessment dates

2nd Cycle of Project

• Awarded C-Sap Associate status & funding to continue research

• Able to implement all changes

• Another focus group

Findings

• Induction: ‘you expect uni to be really difficult and then in an induction you’re told that it’s going to be really hard and you’re going to have to do lots of reading, it’s a bit insulting really’

• Assessment Preparation: ‘preparation depends on the lecturer really, some lecturers give you lots of tips and others leave you on your own really, it’s not the same’

Sociological Theory

• Big improvement in student attainment in module:

• 2009/10: Mean mark 42.97% 60.81% students successful

• 2010/11: Mean mark 57.98% 92.31% students successful