September 2009 — Volume 3, Issue 5

Call for sector-wide FYE standards

After a year of groundbreaking work, ALTC Senior Fellow Professor Sally Kift is calling for a fundamental shift to “second generation” first year experience (FYE) strategies that recognise the centrality of curriculum design.

As Professor Kift points out, FYE work and research to date has generally been “around” the curriculum, or “in aid of it”, but has failed to focus on what intentional and holistic first year curriculum design might optimally entail.

This is clearly a crucial issue given the natural connection to engagement and retention and the government imperative that 20 per cent of university enrolments will include students from low SES backgrounds by 2020.

Emphasising that curriculum design is at the centre of the student first year experience, Professor Kift advocates moving to second generation FYE strategies that focus squarely on enhancing the student experience through pedagogy, curriculum design, and learning and teaching practice in the physical and virtual environment.

“The adoption of a curriculum focus to the FYE seemed to be the missing link in current theorising and practice on the topic,” according to the Queensland University of Technology Law Professor and former director of QUT’s FYE program.

Her ALTC Fellowship is based on the premise that students beginning university must be inspired, supported and realise their sense of belonging, not just for early engagement and retention, but for later learning success and a lifetime of professional practice.

Professor Kift says that while an impressive body of research, practice and policy around the FYE is now available, as recently as two years ago international expert Professor Vincent Tinto of the University of Syracuse lamented the fact that substantial gains in student retention were difficult to come by and much had yet to be done to translate research and theory into effective practice.

“My ALTC Fellowship has sought to respond to this considerable challenge,” Professor Kift says, noting that valuable empirical and other research data on the Australian situation signal how the patterns of student engagement and the student cohort itself have changed over time.

These data reveal pockets of excellence in individual institutions as well as in discrete programs and subjects. But Professor Kift argues that this essentially piecemeal approach is rarely, if ever, linked across the institution and effort needs to be directed at moving practice towards more holistic and sustainable institution-wide approaches and enhancements. Implementing such an agenda is neither straightforward nor unproblematic.

According to Professor Kift, in the face of increasing student diversity in preparedness and entering cultural capital, the curriculum is what students have in common, is within individual institutional control, and is where time-poor students are entitled to expect academic and social relevance, support and engagement. Her fellowship has focused therefore on harnessing the curriculum as the academic and social “organising device”.

In the lead-up to the fellowship, however, she was confronted with a dearth of shared wisdom and very few accessible case study exemplars of good holistic design even though teachers, academic managers and others were looking for both theoretical and practical assistance for designing first year curriculum in response to increasingly diverse entering student cohorts. The importance of academic and professional partnerships in the pursuit of this agenda was also quickly identified as a critical issue.

One of the major outcomes of Professor Kift’s fellowship is the articulation of a research-based
‘transition pedagogy’ which she describes as a guiding philosophy for intentional first year curriculum design and support that carefully scaffolds and mediates the FYE for contemporary cohorts.

This pedagogy is framed around the identification of six First Year Curriculum Principles that stand out as supportive of first year learning engagement, success and retention. They are:

• Transition
• Diversity
• Design
• Engagement
• Assessment
• Evaluation and monitoring
   

One of the features of Professor Kift’s fellowship has been her intense engagement with institutions across the sector and her generosity in sharing the outcomes of her work. She has identified six meta-findings from a preliminary analysis of data collected from this sectoral engagement.

These include that sustainable partnerships between academic and professional staff are crucial to the efficacy of contemporary FYE work but that this can be hard work and universities are struggling with whole-of-institution integration, coordination and coherency.

Another is that there is considerable evidence of momentum for sector-wide consensus around the FYE and for a response that is unified and consistent to assist individual institutions. Another finding notes there is much still to be done to ensure that good practice in the FYE is supported, valued, recognised and rewarded, with the scope of this work being both professional and personal for students and staff.

Professor Kift identifies six recommendations for future action to maintain and build on the momentum generated by the work of her fellowship and to align the Australian tertiary sector’s response with the federal government’s new higher education agenda.

The recommendations are as follows:

• That there be further investigation into, and identification of good practice examples under, each of the fellowship’s six First Year Curriculum Principles.
• That consideration be given to investigating and articulating sector-wide standards for the undergraduate FYE.
• That top level institutional policies should explicitly acknowledge and be attuned to the transitional learning and support needs of diverse undergraduate first year student cohorts.
• That interested academic and professional FYE staff be facilitated to establish and maintain a FYE community of practice.
• That the ALTC should adopt a leading role in fostering and supporting sector-wide action and consensus on the FYE.
• That an ALTC leadership project be commissioned around facilitating, enabling and enacting academic and professional partnerships.

Other outcomes from the fellowship are a set of ‘expert commentaries’ on the first year curriculum case studies collected from a range of perspectives deemed critical to a transition pedagogy. There is a web presence on the ALTC Exchange to disseminate outcomes and provide other supportive resources.

An extensive engaged dissemination strategy was also developed, highlights of which include an eBook with 42 FYE exemplars that were part of the 2009 FYE Curriculum Design Symposium. This event, which
featured Professor Tinto, was limited to 400 delegates with demand for places far outstripping availability. A DVD of the proceedings is available at www.fyecd2009.qut.edu.au/resources/fyecd2009_movie.jsp


*In 2007, Professor Kift was appointed an ALTC Senior Fellow. In 2008 senior fellowships were renamed ALTC National Teaching Fellowships while associate fellowships were renamed teaching fellowships.