The First Year at University: Teaching Students in Transition

If academics are genuinely to develop as teachers throughout their careers, if they are to continue to produce innovations, they have to bring a scholarly orientation to teaching. This series will show them how to do that. It will teach them how to make credible cases for different forms of innovation, thus helping them to situate teaching centrally in their careers. It will also show them ways of solving students' problems and methods of helping their students to learn more effectively.

The first year at university can be a very challenging time for students especially in a mass system of higher education. Many students are ill-equipped to cope with life at university and retention is now a critical metric for all universities. This has resulted in universities having to spend considerable time and attention on ensuring that the `first year experience' is as positive as possible for all students.

This book offers a range of practical strategies, underpinned by relevant research, which lecturers can implement when charged with working with first year students in order to ease their transition to higher education. These strategies affect not only the design of courses, teaching and assesment but also how teams of lecturers provide consistent support, and how this in turn is supported by strategic planning at an institutional level.

The first Year at University is a practical resource that can be used by a wide range of lecturers including those undertaking the PGCE (Higher Education) as well as those on CPD courses on teaching and learning in higher education.

Bill Johnston is a senior lecturer in the Centre for Academic Practice, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. He has spoken, researched and published in the areas of critical thinking, educational perspectives on the student experience, curriculum design and information literacy.