A Head Start into Higher Education : How students academically prepare and adjust for a successful transition into university

Given the challenging transition from secondary school into university, this dissertation aimed to explain how students can be supported to be academically successful in the first year at university. An important result is that the transition from secondary education to university is experienced by students in different ways. Students were profiled as Active Gliders, Passive Gliders, Passive Low Performers and Negative Strugglers, based on their effort for learning, academic self-efficacy belief and performance. These results indicate that from the perspective of these different profiles, targeted support for students during the transition might be most effective for improving first-year academic success. In addition, this dissertation shows that effort for learning plays an important role during the transition to university. How engaged students are at secondary school determines to what extent they show effortful learning behaviour during the first months at university. This effortful learning behaviour seems to be influenced by a pre-academic programme intervention, aimed at giving students a head start. The pre-academic programme can improve student-faculty interaction and student-peer interaction of first-year students, and positively influence students’ academic performance. Finally, the results in this dissertation indicate that students have different reasons to attend university (such as career perspective or for personal development), but that these reasons seem to have no influence on their academic success in the first year. The educational practice should take this into account when supporting the process of choosing a degree programme for prospective students

After the fire: New ways of working in an academic setting

Abstract Purpose – This paper presents the research findings of a Post-Occupancy Evaluation of new ways of working at the Faculty of Architecture of the Delft University of Technology and the lessons learned. Design/Methodology/Approach – The article is based on an internet survey among daily users, additional interviews with decision makers and other participants involved in the implementation process, analysis of documents and personal observations. Findings – The new office plan scores high on possibilities to meet other people. Work spaces are considered to be functional. On the other hand, employees reported a lack of spaces suited for confidential (telephone) conversations and insufficient visual and auditory privacy. Employees can insufficiently control the climate of their direct work environment and the way the environment looks like. Safety of the workplaces is rated below average. People want more rooms equipped with doors, and doors that can be locked. Finally, an important complaint was lack of personal and collective filing and storage possibilities. Research limitations – There was no opportunity to conduct a zero measurement ex ante; long term effects on use and experience are not known yet, nor the effects of improvements that are being implemented this year. Practical implications – The results can be used to support decision ma

A head start in higher education

Given the challenging transition from secondary school into higher education, this quasi-experimental study measured the effects of a preacademic programme (i.e. before starting at university) on student–faculty interactions, student–peer interactions, sense of belonging, and first-year academic performance. Fifty-eight first-year students participated in a pre-academic programme (i.e. the experimental group) focused on changing their perceptions of effective learning behaviour to enhance high-quality interaction with peers and faculty, their sense of belonging, and academic performance. A control group comprised 237 first-year students who did not attend the programme. Participation in the programme enhanced formal student–faculty and student-peer interactions, as well as informal student-peer interactions. No effect was found on sense of belonging. Furthermore, participation in the programme enhanced students’ attained grade during the first course and enhanced their first-year cumulative GPA. The results suggest that participation in the pre-academic programme could give students a head start in higher education