FYE: The new imperative in Australian universities

Yoni Ryan
Director of the Centre for the Enhancement of Learning, Teaching and Scholarship
University of Canberra

Noel Meyers
Senior Teaching Fellow
University of Tasmania

The excellent research series on First Years emanating from the University of Melbourne’s Centre for the Studies of Higher Education has resulted in time series data that has informed and reformed the way support staff develop transition programs.  

 Complementing and complicating this research is a plethora of reports on ‘Net Gen’, and ‘Digital Natives’. Many faculty staff remain unaware of the research, however; much less have they considered the implications of the research for the way we might design our programs, and teach now and in the future. Epistemology ─ how we know what we know ─ is itself changing as digital technologies become pervasive.

Further, many staff report that the research findings generally and transition programs in particular influence the university experience of fewer students than they might.  Getting the appropriate information into students' hands in a timely fashion to guide their progress represents another challenge.

Is an FYE, institution-based website the answer to this knowledge transfer problem?  What should be included?  To more effectively engage students, do we need to embed and integrate such resources and support into students’ transition experiences?

This workshop will briefly summarise the recent research in Australia and internationally in FYE and new generation students, realistically assess the preferences and skills of Digital Natives, and then workshop: the use of an FYE website, target audiences, and content of such a site, and the implications for enacting such repositories for students’ transition experiences.