Positioned within the importance of the first year for persistence, this 6-month project sought to map the first-year experience at the University of Washington. Research conducted by Dr. Cassady Glass Hastings.
The project will research best practices in First-Year Experience (FYE) programs at
Tennessee’s six public universities. Faculty and staff with responsibility for FYE at
the universities will be contacted to complete a survey on best practices of FYE on their
campuses.
The academic and practitioner literature on the transitional challenges of first-year students at four-year sector in the United States goes back over a century. More recently, two-year institutions have increasingly been adopting first-year practices and programs, in part based on empirical and anecdotal evidence from the four-year sector. However, the history of such programming designed specifically for first-year students in two-year programs is less well-documented than that of the four-year sector, and deserves further attention.
Beyond understanding whether first-year student success interventions in community colleges are effective—for which there is mixed evidence in the literature—this study’s purpose was to uncover how they work to realize observed outcomes, including at times unanticipated undesirable outcomes.
Using quantitative and qualitative data gathered from 842 students in 54 courses during Fall 2013 and 2014, this article considers the comparative merits of Living Learning Communities (LLC), "habits of mind" First-Semester Core (FSC) courses, a hybrid-model (LLC-FSC) initiative, and non-FYE courses by considering students' perception of their academic gains and social engagement.
Blog post on Inside Higher Ed. While this post highlights the goals of FYE at larger research institutions, there are some thought provoking ideas to consider for any school type.
The research clearly suggests that academic and non-academic factors are co-active ingredients in supporting retention and graduation, not only in the first year, but longitudinally, and for all students.
