First year experience and curriculum design
A portal for an Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC) Senior Fellowship Program awarded to Professor Sally Kift, Queensland University of Technology. This Senior Fellowship Program focuses on the national learning and teaching priority of enhancing the first year experience (FYE) of Australian higher education students.
A curriculum focus to the FYE has been adopted and the Program aims to develop a guiding philosophy for intentional FY curriculum renewal – a transition pedagogy – that carefully scaffolds and mediates the FY learning experience for contemporary heterogeneous cohorts. A case study approach has been utilised to explore good practice exemplars of customised FY curriculum design across a representative range of disciplines and institutions. Expert commentaries and frameworks have also been developed around perspectives identified as critical for successful first year learning engagement - such as early formative assessment; academic preparedness; graduate attributes; diversity; sessional staff engagement; career connections; etc. These resources will provide the research-led evidence base for a theoretical framework that better informs and supports program designers, first year teachers and academic managers in their individual reconceptualisation of customised first year curriculum design.
Guided by an expert national and international collaborative team, a major Fellowship outcome will be the articulation of a set of Guiding Principles for a Transition Pedagogy.
The current key resources are:
- First Year Curriculum Design Case Study Exemplars
- Perspectives on First Year Curriculum Design (expert commentaries on the case study exemplars)
- Fellowship collaborator details
- Further Fellowship Resources